latin american essays maclas

MACLAS
LATIN AMERICAN ESSAYS
Volume 23
MIDDLE ATLANTIC
COUNCIL OF
LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
LATIN AMERICAN ESSAYS
MACLAS
Vol. 23
Selected Papers Presented at the 30th Annual
Conference of the Middle American Council of Latin
American Studies
The College of William and Mary
Williamsburg, VA
March 6-7, 2009
Joan Marx
Muhlenberg College
Managing Editor
Maria Mercedes Andrade
Universidad de los Andes
Associate Managing Editor
Kenneth Lehman
Hampden-Sydney College
Associate Editor
Brian Turner
Randolph-Macon College
Associate Editor
ii
Managing Editor’s Preface
The twenty-second volume in the in the series of MACLAS: Latin American
Essays presents a selection of five papers given at the Thirtieth Annual
Conference of the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies held at the
College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, March 6-7, 2009.
Acknowledgements
The Editorial Board wishes to thank Muhlenberg College for the financial and
human resources support for the publication of Volume 23.
Visit the MACLAS web page:
www.maclas.org
Offprints of articles in MACLAS are available from
The Gale Group
362 Lakeside Drive
Foster City, CA 94404
(formerly Information Access Company)
ISSN: 1525-125X
Copyright © 2010 by MACLAS
No portion may be reproduced without
the express permission of MACLAS.
iii
Table of Contents
History
Mark Wasserman
Latin American
Studies
Virginia Bouvier
Jack Child
In Memorium:
Robert J. Alexander (1918-2010): Pioneer
Latin Americanist
2009 Keynote Address for the 30th
Annual MACLAS Conference in
Williamsburg:
Reflections on the State of the Art in Latin
American Studies
A Copyright-Free Source of Latin American
Visuals
Literature and Language
Stephanie Demaree
Juan Espadas Prize:
Macondo versus McOndo: realismo mágico y
el peso de la memoria histórica en The Brief
Wondrous Life Oscar Wao
Carlos Rodríguez McGill
Book Reviews
María Mercedes Andrade
John Stolle-McAllister
Street Prize Essay 2010:
Intertexualidad y la construcción del
imaginario del delito urbano en Un capitán de
ladrones en Buenos Aires (1879) de Eduardo
Gutiérrez
Huízar, Angélica J. Beyond the Page: Latin
American Poetry from the Calligramme to the
Virtual
The Arthur P. Whitaker Prize:
Jack Child, Miniature Messages: The
Semiotics of Latin American Postage Stamps.
iv
5
11
22
33
43
57
59
In Memorium:
ROBERT J. ALEXANDER (1918-2010): PIONEER LATIN AMERICANIST
Mark Wasserman
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Robert J. Alexander, one of the post- World War II pioneers in the study of Latin America and
the Caribbean in the United States, died April 27, 2010. His was a remarkable career in terms of the
quality and quantity of his scholarship and the depth and breadth of his social activism. Among his
many accomplishments, he was one of the founders of the Middle Atlantic Council on Latin American
Studies in 1979. He also served as President of MACLAS in 1987-88.1
Though born in Canton, Ohio during World War I, Robert Jackson Alexander was a ―Jersey
Boy‖ through and through. His family moved to Leonia when he was four. He went to college and
graduate school just across the Hudson River at Columbia University. Aside from two years in the
United Kingdom while in the U.S. Army Air Corps ---the 95th Bomb Group (H)---during World War II, a
short stint in Washington, D.C., working for the U.S. Department of State after the war, and then a
year in Chile, researching his dissertation, he spent his whole life in the Garden State, much of it in his
house on River Road in Piscataway, a stone‘s throw from the Raritan River. His career at Rutgers, now
The State University of New Jersey, lasted for half a century, beginning as an instructor in 1947,
through retirement in 1989, and post-retirement teaching until 2002. He also married a Jersey girl,
Joan O. Powell, who was also from Leonia.2 They had two children, Anthony (1957) and Margaret
(1960).
Bob may have had Jersey roots, but he had global reach. He was a pioneer Latin
Americanist, as an economist, political scientist, and historian. He was witness to and recorder of
much of what went on in politics, government, labor, and do-gooding in the region for decades. Not
only was he extraordinarily prolific, with dozens of books and hundreds of articles and book chapters,
but he compiled an unequalled collection of contemporaneous interviews, some ten thousand, with the
politicians, business people, government officials, and trade union leaders of the times. 3
We can see three strong chords in Bob‘s life. The first was his pursuit of the intellectual life,
complemented by a strong curiosity about people. Second, he was a bit of an adventurer. Obviously,
1
Fernanda Perrone, "Biographical Sketch of Robert J. Alexander" in Inventory to the Papers of Robert
Jackson Alexander is the source of much of the information in this article. See also John D. French,
―The Robert J. Alexander Interview Collection,‖ Hispanic American Historical Review 84:2 (May 2004):
315-326 and ―Interview with Robert J. Alexander,‖ in John D. French, Compiler, Robert J. Alexander:
The Complete Bibliography of a Pioneering Latin Americanist (Miami: Center for Labor Research and
Studies, Florida International University, 1991).
2
Joanny, as Bob called her, was literally the girl next door. Robert J. Alexander, ―An Autobiography,‖
unpublished manuscript, 2002.
3
French, ―Alexander Collection.‖ French secured a grant from the National Endowment of the
Humanities to catalogue the collection at Rutgers University‘s Special Collections.
5
he loved to travel and it seemed that he was quite often ―where the action was.‖ 4 Third, Bob had a
sense of social justice. He combined this with an easy-going aptitude for getting things started. John
French described Bob as an ―intellectual engagé: a social democratic intellectual convinced…that our
ideas must speak directly to current problems.‖5
It might be said that Bob was born to be an academic. He came into the world on November
26, 1918, in Canton, Ohio, the son of Ralph S. Alexander and Ruth Jackson Alexander. They moved to
Leonia in 1922, when his father took a position at Columbia University‘s School of Business, where he
would teach Marketing for thirty-nine years. After attending Leonia public schools, graduating high
school in 1936, Bob went on to Columbia. There he fell under the sway of the legendary Frank
Tannenbaum, who in his younger days had been a ―Wobblie‖ (International Workers of the World or
I.W.W., the union that had organized many of the great strikes during the 1910s in western mining
and lumber camps). In academia, however, Tannenbaum was well-known for training many historians
of Latin America in the United States, for pioneering the fields of comparative slavery and comparative
race relations, and for writing two masterpieces on the Mexican Revolution. Tannenbaum was his
mentor through his undergraduate (B.A. 1940), Masters (1941), and PhD. (1950). It is obvious from
his ―Autobiography‖ that Bob loved the academic life.
Apparently Bob was struck early by the need to see the world. His travels began with a
European trip after his high school graduation in 1936. This included a visit to Spain as the civil war
began. He also managed to visit Munich where he saw Nazi headquarters at close hand. 6 He was in
France during the early days of the Popular Front government of Leon Blum, as well. These would not
be the last times he would be where the ―action‖ was.
In April, 1942, he was drafted and the following year sent to Great Britain. In his two years
stationed there he traveled throughout the country. Evidently it was then that he took to talking to
people and taking notes afterwards, a technique he would perfect later on. Two further Alexander
trademarks began in England as well: he spoke with trade unionists, who would become the subjects
of much of his research, and he wrote, in this instance an unpublished manuscript ―A Yank‘s Eye View
of Britain.‖ After his initial trip to Latin America in 1947 he returned to the region hundreds of times.
From 1952 to 1959 he traveled under the sponsorship of the American Federation of Labor and the
AFL-CIO.
His knack for finding excitement continued. He was in Argentina in 1947 at the heyday of
Juan and Eva Perón. He was in Guatemala in the early 1950s during the revolutionary regime of
Jacobo Arbenz. In 1957 he spent a month in Bolivia with the Foreign Economic Administration in the
midst of one of the most radical revolutions of the twentieth century. In 1958 he attended the
inauguration of Rómulo Betancourt as the first democratically elected president of Venezuela. 7 When
4
In his ―Autobiography‖ Bob estimates that he spent twelve years abroad during his lifetime.
French, ―Alexander Collection,‖ p. 320. Bob referred to himself in 2002 as a ―liberal democrat.‖
Alexander, ―An Autobiography.‖
6
Dr. Norman Markowitz Email Correspondence with the Author, June 21, 2010. See also Alexander,
―Autobiography,‖ p. 30.
7
See note from Virginia Betancourt Valverde, June 11, 2010. In 1964 Bob attended the inaugural of
Raúl Leoni as president, the first peaceful transfer of power from one democratically elected head of
state to another in Venezuelan history.
5
6
revolution triumphed in Cuba in 1959, Bob flew off to Havana during winter break to see what was
going on first hand. There he met with Che Guevara. 8 Three years later, he was in the Dominican
Republic at the time of an ill-fated military revolt. He was in the main plaza when the shooting
erupted. In 1965-1966 he spent a year in Brazil during some of the darkest days of the era of military
dictatorship. In 1976 he visited Paraguay, at the time submerged in the tyranny of Alfredo Stroessner,
as part of an International League for Human Rights mission.
Bob‘s search for social justice emerged early, moved by the exigencies of the Great
Depression of the 1930s. In 1932 he rented out a storefront in the center of Leonia and invited
prominent labor, political, and religious leaders from New York to come and speak to local audiences.9
He joined the Young People's Socialist League in 1934 at age sixteen. In 1938 he joined with a friend
to travel to Jersey City to help organize dockworkers and was turned away by thugs under the orders
of Boss Frank Hague.10 After breaking with the Socialists over their pacifist stance against World War
II, he subsequently rejoined, serving on its National Executive Committee from 1957 to 1966,
continuing in the same capacity to its successor Social Democrats, U.S.A. until 1980, when he parted
ways in protest against its growing conservatism.
His activism took many forms. In the 1950s he was one of the founders of the first faculty
union at Rutgers, a local affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers. He defended public school
teachers fired for striking in New York City in 1968 as a member of the Ad Hoc Committee to Defend
the Right to Teach. In the 1970s after initially supporting the war in Vietnam, he joined the Rutgers
teach-ins against the war. During the same period, he led protests against then Rutgers president
Edward Bloustein, whom he thought had flouted faculty prerogatives.
The twin pillars of his view of Latin America were his belief in democracy (in opposition to
totalitarianism) and his belief in the ―American mission‖ and the essential decency of U.S. policies.11
Like many other Liberals of the Cold War era, he was strongly anti-communist in his outlook on foreign
relations.
Early on Bob was a champion of democracy. In 1950 he was one of the founders of the
Inter-American Association for Democracy and Freedom, chairing its North American Committee until
the organization ended in 1985. Bob notably opposed the U.S. intervention in Guatemala in 1954 and
the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965. He strongly promoted Romulo Betancourt and
his party Acción Democrática to replace Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez during the 1950s.
8
On the occasion of a talk by Jorge Castañeda on his then forthcoming biography of Che, I asked Bob
if he had ever met Che. Of course he had. Bob had first met Che in Guatemala in the early 1950s,
when both were there during the presidency of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, the left-of-center leader the
U.S. C.I.A. overthrew in 1954.
9
In Memoriam by William Theodore de Bary, June 2010. DeBary and Alexander were school chums
and friends for eighty years.
10
Norman Markowitz told me this story, June 2010.
11
French, ―Alexander Collection,‖ p. 316.
7
One of the highlights of his career was his appointment by President John F. Kennedy to the
Task Force on Latin America, which recommended the establishment of the Alliance for Progress. At
least one admirer described Bob as a moving force behind its founding. 12
Bob‘s major contribution to scholarship was his work on labor. As John French has aptly
stated, ―Everyone who studies Latin American labor today relies on the books and often the archive of
Robert Alexander.‖13 Charles Bergquist pointed out that from the 1940s Bob realized, perhaps, alone
among those who studied Latin America, how important labor was for the development of the
region.14 French goes on to say that whether one agreed with Bob or not ―everyone recognizes the
quality, the honesty, and the uncanny feel for workers and politics to be found in Alexander‘s work.‖ 15
Bob‘s mission was to educate people in the United States about Latin America. He was not
only a first rate scholar, but he did what most of us only aspire to do, he reached for a broader
audience. He wrote four textbooks: Today‘s Latin America (two editions, 1962, 1967), Latin America
(high school level, two editions, 1964, 1967), Latin American Politics and Development (1965), and
Latin American Political Parties (1973).16
Of his four dozen books, probably the classics were The Perón Era (1951), The Bolivian
National Revolution (1958), and Organized Labor in Latin America (1965). Victor Paz Estenssoro, the
president of Bolivia, named him to the order of the Condor of the Andes for the second of these. 17 In
addition to his remarkable studies of labor, Bob was the leading expert on Communism and Socialism
and their variations in Latin America and internationally. He wrote eight books on these topics.18 He
12
The admirer was Mark T. Berger, Under Northern Eyes: Latin American studies and U.S. Hegemony
in the Americas, 18989-1990 (Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 78 cited in French, ―Alexander
Collection,‖ 319. Bob never got to meet Kennedy.
13
French, Bibliography, p.1.
14
Charles Bergquist, Labor in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986).
15
French, Bibliography, 1.
16
Bob once told colleague Yale Ferguson that ―the books you and I write will never make any money.
That‘s not why we write them.‖ Yale Ferguson, ―Professor Robert J. Alexander Memorial Tribute,‖
June 2010.
17
Published respectively by Columbia University Press, Rutgers University Press (reprinted by Savile
Print Shop, and Greenwood), and Free Press. From 2003 Praeger published a series of studies of
organized labor in individual Latin American countries. A History of Organized Labor in the English
Speaking Caribbean (2004); Organized Labor in Brazil (2003); Organized Labor in Central America
(2008); Organized Labor in Peru and Ecuador (2006); Organized Labor in Bolivia (2005); Organized
Labor in Uruguay and Paraguay (2005), and International Labor Organizations and Organized Labor in
Latin America and the Caribbean: A History (2009).
18
Communism in Latin America (Rutgers University Press, three editions, 1957, 1960, 1963); The
Communist Party of Venezuela (Hoover Institution Press, 1969); Trotskyism in Latin America (Hoover
Institution Press, 1973); Aprismo: The Ideas and Doctrines of Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre (Kent
State University Press, 1973); The Right Opposition: The Lovestoneites and the International
Communist Opposition of the 1930s (Greenwood, 1981); International Trotskyism, 1929-1985: A
Documented Analysis of the Movement (Duke University Press, 1991); Maoism in the Developed World
(2001); International Maoism in the Developing World (1999).
8
was clearly taken with Latin American leaders who practiced centrist politics, for he wrote biographies
of three of them: Arturo Alessandri of Chile, Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela, and Juscelino
Kubitschek of Brazil.19 His books were translated into Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Chinese.
Bob was always writing another book. I remember entering his office on the Livingston
Campus (he actually had two offices at the time) years ago to view his enormous files of interviews
and his amazing collection of pamphlets from leftist groups. There on his desk and filing cabinets
were manuscripts competed and waiting for a publisher. All were written on an old, battered
typewriter. Can you imagine writing four dozen books on a typewriter? And he never stopped writing.
His last book was published in 2010.20
Unprepossessing is perhaps the best word to describe Bob, with his ever-present pipe and
rumpled white (when I knew him) hair. Colleague economist Hugh Rockoff remembers thinking when
he first met Bob that he seemed dressed quite elegantly with his ―French‖ style shirts, until another
colleague corrected the notion, pointing out that the French ―look‖ was really burn holes, not lace, the
result of his ever-present professorial pipe. And, of course, the holes were in his sports jackets, ties,
and pants, as well. Bob‘s quiet, contemplative manner added to his scholarly demeanor.
One colleague once asked Bob the key to his longevity. Bob replied that it was his daily bowl
of soup (the kind varied every day), a slice of cream pie, and coffee with a dollop of cream at the
Rutgers faculty cafeteria, fare which he probably enjoyed for half a century.21
Bob was in later years, after mathematics had taken over economics, a square peg in a
department with many round holes. Hugh Rockoff recalls the decades-long discussion Bob had with
his colleagues about the cause of inflation, which Bob attributed to high interest rates---to every other
economist there a truly wrong-headed analysis (the Federal Reserve, in fact, customarily raised
interest rates to limit inflation). But Bob never gave up his view that producers passed on the cost of
higher interest rates to consumers, thus raising prices. He was always able to get along with his
colleagues and not a few times to help keep the peace. He remained close friends with Shanti Tangri
and Monroe Berkowitz, fellow economists, even though they varied widely in their views on politics.
Bob had an uncanny knack to bridge divides through his honesty. John French puts it this
way: ―a preeminently political man, he won me over precisely by addressing the political fissure that
stood between us…‖ He then lauds Bob: ―His ability to reach across lines of difference—without
19
Arturo Alessandri: A Biography, 2 vols. (University Microfilms, 1977); Romulo Betancourt and the
Transformation of Venezuela (Transaction Press, 1981); and Juscelino Kubitschek and the
Development of Brazil (Ohio University Monographs in International Studies, 1991).
20
On more than one occasion, when Bob was asked if he had read this or that work, he expressed
little interest in ―keeping up.‖ To Yale Ferguson he noted ―Son, remember, you either read ‗em OR
you write ‗em.‖ Ferguson, ―Tribute.‖ Bob proved enormously resourceful in finding publishers for his
work. In one instance, after a visit to the Chicago World‖s Fair in 1933, he wrote a thin tome
―Century of Progress‖, which he persuaded the R. H. Macy Company to sell in its stores. Alexander,
―Autobiography,‖ p. 14. There was one manuscript for which he never found a publisher, a biography
of socialist leader Norman Thomas. Alexander, ―Autobiography.‖
21
He might have added to the food the conversation and camaraderie of Alex Balinky, Shanti Tangri,
Norman Markowitz, and others, as well.
9
hiding his own dispositions—was crucial to the intelligence he gathered through the
…interviews…across sixty years.‖22
Bob was so often in on things at their beginnings. Not only did he help to found the faculty
union at Rutgers, the Inter-American Association for Democracy and Freedom, and MACLAS, but he
founded the Latin American Institute at Rutgers (now the Latin American Studies Program), as well.
He was a notable teacher, winning the Rutgers College Parent Association Outstanding Teacher Award
in 1984. As Yale Ferguson has pointed out, how could anyone resist a story that began ―as President
of Venezuela Betancourt (or some other dignitary) told me last summer….‖ 23
When Latin America was thoroughly ignored by North American politicians, government
officials, media, and scholars, Robert J. Alexander helped to bring the region into sharp focus.
Through his continuous travel and interviewing, he knew Latin American leaders, past and future,
better than almost anyone else. He generously offered his knowledge to us through his prolific
writing. Bob Alexander was not only an estimable scholar, but a wonderful gentleman, as well. Now,
alas, after seven decades his old typewriter is silent.
22
23
John French, ―Robert Jackson Alexander, 1918-2010.‖ June 2010.
Ferguson, ―Tribute.‖
10
2009 Keynote Address for the 30th Annual MACLAS Conference at the College of William
and Mary, Williamsburg, VA
March 6, 2009
REFLECTIONS ON THE STATE OF THE ART IN
LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
Virginia M. Bouvier
United States Institute for Peace
Center for Mediation and Conflict Resolution
I would like to thank the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies, the Executive
Committee, and the chair of this program, Regina Root, for inviting me to speak at the 30 th MACLAS
annual meeting here at the College of William and Mary. One of the joys of being in this field is
having colleagues like Dr. Root. I have enjoyed seeing the tremendous energy she has brought to this
campus and to MACLAS, and the engagement of the students here, particularly in putting together the
impressive Latin American film festival.
Tonight I would like to reflect on the evolution of Latin American Studies in the United States.
I will discuss some of the issues, continuities, and changes over time—in Latin America, in the field of
Latin American Studies, in academia, and globally. Finally, I will explore a few of the opportunities
and challenges that these changes present for us now and in the years ahead.
DEFINING LATIN AMERICA
The field of Latin American Studies is both plagued and enriched by the fact that its object of
study, Latin America, is a contested entity whose borders and identity are not fixed. Ideas about what
constitutes Latin America (and the field we loosely call Latin American Studies) have changed over
time, as Latin America itself has changed. Geographic criteria, political or strategic interests, and
perceptions of a shared linguistic or cultural heritage have shaped the identity of the region and the
field. These definitions have historically come from outside of Latin America.
―Spanish America/América Española‖ was the nineteenth-century term Spain used to refer to
her former colonies. France coined the term ―Latin America‖ in opposition to ―Anglo America‖ in the
1860‘s when it was vying for global supremacy with England. The term included Spanish America plus
the former colonies in the western hemisphere of Portugal and France. Sometimes Puerto Rico is
considered to be part of Latin America, sometimes not, given its status as a nation without a state.
The French West Indies has a similar ambivalent status. Likewise, Suriname and Guyana, by virtue of
their location in South America are often considered to be part of Latin America, although Romance
languages are not spoken in either country.1
11
While Latin American elites tend to be of Iberian descent, speak Spanish or Portuguese, and
share Catholic and other cultural traditions, millions of other indigenous and Afro-descent populations
living in so-called ―Latin‖ America have languages, and religious and cultural practices that are not
Latin-derived. Their experiences are virtually discounted in the nomenclature of the region.
Today transnational connections between Latin America and the Caribbean and with their
respective Diasporas are enhancing this diversity even more. Evangelical Protestantism is attracting
majorities in some countries such as Guatemala, and new charismatic Catholic movements are
emerging that are often far-removed from their Latin roots.
Furthermore, spatial considerations seem to be less critical in the self-identification of many of
today‘s Latin Americans. Migrations of people and capital, accompanied by ever denser webs of global
communications and social networking are challenging the very nature of what it means to be Latin
American in today‘s world. War, displacement, migration, and new economic and commercial ties
have opened the western hemisphere to immigrants of many cultures. Generations of ―Latin‖ or
―Hispanic‖ Americans reside in the United States and claim Latin American identities. Remittances and
trade relations express the strong links between these and other Diaspora communities and their
homelands.
Latin America –and I use the term in its broadest and most inclusive sense--has nonetheless
always been marked by an effort to find its own autochthonous voices, especially in literature and
other forms of cultural expression. In Brazil, we have Gilberto Freyre‘s exploration of the racial
legacies of slavery in Casa Grande e Senzala, Mario de Andrade‘s effort to create a pan-Brazilian
identity incorporating elements of indigenous folklore and language in Macunaima (1928), and
Marilene Felinto‘s daring exploration of female identity in Brazil in As mulheres de Tijucupapo.
Likewise, other Latin American nations have their own founding texts and subsequent responses that
establish and contest national identities. These texts shape and reflect the parameters for citizenship,
sometimes grappling with issues of race, ethnicity, class, and more recently, gender, in a constant
effort to define and redefine the ever-shifting borders of who is ―in‖ the nation and who is not.
We find moreover a strong tradition of Latin American figures who have sought to forge an
identity that looks beyond national borders. It takes form in José Martí‘s multi-racial vision of ―Nuestra
América,‖ in Enrique Rodó‘s assertion of the spiritual superiority of the Latin south in Ariel, in the
transnational and gender-inclusive ―americanicidad‖ of Victoria Ocampo and Gabriela Mistral (1940s),
and in Gloria Anzaldúa‘s poetic analysis of the liminal spaces that constitute the borderlands/ La
frontera.2 It is accompanied by a yearning for authenticity. As José Martí asserts, ―Let the wine be
made of plátanos, but let it be our wine!‖3
LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
The field of Latin American Studies brings together scholars in a broad range of disciplines
whose subject of inquiry relates to the experiences of Latin America and Latin Americans. While Latin
Americanists frequently define their field as both interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary, scholars of
Latin America are generally based primarily in one disciplinary field, with only a handful of doctoral
programs in Latin American Studies per se.4 So what, if anything, have these shifting, porous,
ambivalent borders of the region and sub-regions of Latin America and the Caribbean meant for the
field of Latin American Studies?
In the United States today, Latin American Studies is broadly defined. We have centers and
12
institutes for Latin American Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Latin American and Latino
Studies, and centers for Iberian and Latin American Studies. We have a Latin American Area Center,
and a Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies. Each has its own inflection based on
the populations it serves, the faculty and students it attracts, and the courses, programs, and
intellectual resources it offers.
So what is different about Latin American Studies as a field? The multidisciplinary approach
of area studies aspires to train students to think creatively, past the paradigms of a particular
discipline, to seek out the connections between disciplines, to use one discipline to illuminate the
strengths and limitations of another, and to draw on the analytical tools from many disciplines.
In Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz‘s 1691 treatise defending the intellectual rights of women, Sor
Juana makes one of the most eloquent defenses of interdisciplinary study I have seen. She argues
that the summit of knowledge (represented in her day by Theology) can only be achieved by climbing
the steps of the sciences and humanities.5 She proceeds to discuss the particular contributions of
Logic, Rhetoric, Physics, Natural Sciences, Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, Architecture, History, Law,
and Astronomy to unlocking this understanding, and concludes her intellectual journey through the
disciplines with the following reflection:
Quisiera yo persuadir todos con mi experiencia a que no sólo no
estorban, pero se ayudan dando luz y abriendo camino las unas para las otras, por
variaciones y ocultos engarces –que para esta cadena universal les puso la sabiduría
de su Autor--, de manera que parece se corresponden y están unidas con admirable
trabazón y concierto. Es la cadena que fingieron los antiguos que salía de la boca de
Júpiter, de donde pendían todas las cosas eslabonadas unas con otras… 6
The origins of the field of Latin American Studies in the United States are only partially
dictated by the drive for greater interdisciplinarity described by Sor Juana. Rather its evolution has
been shape by developments within Latin America on the one hand and U.S. policy and geopolitical
realities on the other.
The particular institutional environment, including the personal and professional links to Latin
America of faculty and administration members as well as the shifting demographics of the students
also influence teaching and research patterns. The Modern Language Association had been promoting
the study of language and culture since its founding in 1884. While several universities in the United
States had already developed Latin American area studies and language courses in the following
decades, Latin American Studies in the United States grew significantly as a field of study in relation to
changing security concerns and commercial interests in the wake of World Wars I and II.
In 1918,
at the end of World War I, historians established Hispanic American Historical Review (HAHR), the first
interdisciplinary journal dedicated to Latin American scholarship in the United States. Nearly a decade
later, in 1926, they launched the Conference on Latin American History, and later, the Handbook of
Latin American Studies, ―the oldest and most prestigious area studies bibliography in the world.‖7
U.S. support for area studies increased with the outbreak of WWII, and in 1939, federal
authorities established the Hispanic Foundation at the Library of Congress as a center for the study of
Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American culture. In the 1930s and 40s, several universities founded
Latin American Studies centers and institutes, including the University of Florida, University of North
13
Carolina, and the University of Texas at Austin. The University of Florida, which has offered Latin
American area and language courses since 1900, founded its Center for Latin American Studies in
1931. The Institute of Latin American Studies at UNC was founded in 1940; UT Austin, which had
offered courses in Latin American history since 1905 and literature since 1917, had fellowships for
students from Mexico, and faculty doing research on tropical medicine in Mexico; it founded its
Institute on Latin American Studies in 1941.8
Institutional support for Latin American studies ebbed once WWII ended.9 Nonetheless,
scholarship, organizing, and networking continued, and foreign students began to enter U.S.
universities in increasing numbers during the 1950s.10 The Pan American Union encouraged the
formation in the United States of regional councils on Latin America to foster interdisciplinary
collaboration around research and education agendas.11 These councils took off throughout the
1950s.12
With the launching of Sputnik in 1957, U.S. policymakers assessed the evolving international
system and deemed the teaching of foreign languages to be critical to national defense needs. In
1958, the U.S. Congress approved Title VI of the National Defense Education Act to support 19
language and area centers at U.S. universities, what are today called National Resource Centers.13 The
mandate, originally applicable only to the study of less commonly taught languages and areas, was
extended to Latin American studies programs in 1960.
The Cuban Revolution spiked interest in Latin America and resources again began to flow.
Representatives of the Title VI area studies centers soon formed the Consortium of Latin American
Studies Programs (CLASP). By 1965, at the behest of the Ford Foundation, the American Council of
Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, and the Hispanic Foundation of the Library of
Congress, thirty-seven universities supported the creation of the Latin American Research Review, a
journal to showcase and promote scholarly research on Latin America. The journal provided the
impetus for the creation of the Latin American Studies Association, established the following year, in
May 1966.14
In this period, the remaining regional councils--the North Central Council of Latin Americanists
(1966), the New England Council of Latin American Studies/NECLAS (1970); and lastly, in 1979, the
Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies/MACLAS—were established.15 Such regional councils
now span the whole of the continental United States.
All of these various organizations and Latin American Studies centers have given rise to
growing numbers of meetings and conferences, scholarly journals and newsletters, publication and
dissertation prizes, electronic list-serves and web pages that have helped foster and institutionalize a
unique and dynamic academic space and identity for Latin Americanists. They continue to provide
spaces for academics working on Latin America from different disciplinary perspectives to come
together and learn from each other, and generate new knowledge and collaborative initiatives.
EVOLUTION OF THE FIELD: ISSUES, CONTINUITY, AND CHANGE
My assessment of the evolution of the field in the next period is shaped in part by my
experiences in academic institutions in the East, West, and South of the United States; at the
undergraduate, graduate, and faculty level; and in academic, advocacy, public policy, and grantmaking institutions.
14
When I received a BA in Latin American Studies from Wellesley College in 1980, it was the
first such degree Wellesley had ever conferred and was considered one of numerous ―independent
majors,‖ rather than a prescribed course of study. And while it was possible to piece together a
coherent multidisciplinary program with two anchoring disciplines, it was clear that ―Third World‖
studies, as they were informally known then, enjoyed second-class status in academia. Latin
American courses were offered only periodically and there were not enough relevant course offerings
to create a major without going off campus (ultimately, I would argue, a good thing.) There was no
real effort to recruit and retain faculty who specialized in Latin America and Africa, as these were
rarely the primary teaching responsibilities for which faculty were hired. And study abroad was not
only difficult, it was also punitive, since in most cases you were likely to lose academic credit and
financial aid if you chose to study at a foreign institution.
In the 1970s, students were following events in Chile and the Southern Cone with particular
interest. U.S. policies in every sphere came under review. In the aftermath of Allende‘s overthrow,
the U.S. Congress held oversight hearings on the role of U.S. intelligence operations and
multinationals overseas. Scholars and students analyzed U.S. national security policies, military and
economic policies, food and development policies, and human rights policies. They revisited Good
Neighbor policies, Gunboat Diplomacy, Dollar Diplomacy, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and
the Alliance for Progress.
Interdisciplinarity was in the air, though it was far from institutionalized. In politics and history
courses alike, we read Latin American literature. Students of religion and politics and sociology were
meeting to read books by liberation theologians Gustavo Gutiérrez, Jon Sobrino, and Marie Augusta
Neal, and we read Paolo Freire. We studied the epistolary exchange between Ernesto Cardenal and
Daniel Berrigan penned in the midst of the Nicaraguan revolution, and debated the nature of
institutionalized or structural violence and the appropriate moral response. We talked about the
disappeared in Argentina, the tortured in Paraguay, the political prisoners in Uruguay. We protested
U.S. support of dictatorships in Central and South America, and we started a chapter of Amnesty
International on campus.
My subsequent experience as an MA student in Spanish at the University of South Carolina
within a mostly rather traditional Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, may have been
the more typical experience for students of Spanish. The battle there in the early 1980s was primarily
between peninsulares and Latin Americanists, and the latter were fighting a valiant but uphill battle
with a few key allies from other disciplines. Reflective of faculty interests, Spanish authors largely
prevailed over Latin American writers both in the classroom and on the reading list for the MA
program. To the best of my recollection, discussion of theory –other than that related to the
pedagogy of teaching--was largely absent from the curriculum and the classroom. Contextual analysis
was widely discouraged, and seen as widely irrelevant to the appreciation of the text.
After finishing my coursework at USC, I relocated to Washington, D.C. a year and a half later,
where I began work at the Washington Office on Latin America, an NGO focused on U.S. policy toward
Latin America. By then, debates about the Southern Cone were slowly giving way to intensified
discussions about Central America. Waves of displaced Central Americans, fleeing poverty and war,
began to seek refuge, jobs, and education in the United States. U.S. churches declared themselves
sanctuaries and increased their advocacy efforts to stop U.S. support of the war in El Salvador. The
gruesome killings in El Salvador of Archbishop Oscar Romero, four U.S. churchwomen, the renowned
15
Jesuit scholar Ignacio Ellacuria (rector of the Central American University--UCA), and numerous
colleagues, and the widespread repression in the country accelerated and legitimized church and
public engagement in the United States.
In the ideologically polarized environment of the time, Latin America was seen as a potential
threat to U.S. national security. Chicago Council on Foreign Relations studies showed that the
percentage of foreign policy leaders who ranked Latin/South/Central America among the top three
most serious foreign policy problems facing the United States jumped from 5% in 1978 to 21% by
1982.16
Scholarship on Central America, which had been rather thin, took off. Given the ideological
polarization of this late Cold War period, many area studies experts sought to re-situate Latin America
as more than just the site for turf wars between superpowers.
Nonetheless, Latin America slowly dropped off the policymaking agenda as the Cold War
subsided, civil wars in Central America began to wind down, transitions to civilian rule in South
America moved ahead, and the debt crisis was alleviated (at least temporarily). By 1991, the Chicago
Council on Foreign Relations reported that the Latin American region had dropped significantly in the
list of foreign policy concerns, with only 2% of the respondents feeling that Latin America was a top
foreign policy problem.17 More pressing concerns included Iraq, the Middle East, Russia, international
trade, the world economy, keeping the peace, Eastern Europe, Japan, poverty and underdevelopment
in the third world, economic unification of Europe, and the need for a stronger U.S. foreign policy.
In 1989, I left Washington to pursue a doctorate in Latin American Studies at the University
of California at Berkeley. Being in California confronted me with new questions related to my
understanding of Latin America and Latin American Studies, and drove home to me how important
place, that is, our actual physical location as well as our subjective positioning, is to the kinds of
questions that drive our intellectual quests to make sense of the world around us.
I quickly expanded and adapted my preconceptions about Latin America to the new context in
which I was studying. I found a number of changes since I had been an undergraduate were shaping
the evolving field of Latin American Studies:
First, with increasing globalization, study abroad programs were then and are now seen as an
essential part of a modern student‘s education. More U.S. students are studying abroad and more
foreign students are studying in the United States.
Second, interdisciplinary programs and courses have become far more common than before,
although universities are still grappling with the structures that can best accommodate interdisciplinary
approaches. UC-Berkeley‘s Center for Latin American Studies maintained a list of affiliated faculty
across the campus from distinct disciplines, but the Latin American Studies program depended on the
disciplinary departments to offer courses and hire faculty, and retained little power or resources to
create its own permanent faculty, courses, or graduate teaching assistantships. The Center was
nonetheless an important locus of activities and provided a regular stream of visiting and guest faculty
from a wide range of disciplines and professions.
Third, in the nearly two decades since I had been an undergraduate, sub-altern voices –those
marginalized by gender, race and ethnicity, and class - had been moving steadily from the margins
toward the center. Berkeley had an Ethnic Studies Department, within which a student might
specialize in Asian American Studies, Native American Studies, Chicano Studies, or Afro-American
Studies. It had a Women‘s Studies Program, a Development Studies Program, and an International
16
Studies Program. All of these were cross-disciplinary in nature. This powerful first step of inclusion
intersected and was reinforced by developments across many disciplines and unleashed an explosion
that continues to reverberate across fields.
In history, there was a shift toward social histories of all sorts, including labor history, history
of social movements, women‘s history, Chicano history, Native American history, and immigration
history. Ethnic Studies was hitting its stride following what Edna Acosta-Belén has called an
―explosion in grassroots ethnic activism and organizing.‖18 Women‘s studies was just beginning to
move beyond the ―mix-and-stir‖ approach to grapple with the ways that consideration of gender might
alter our analysis altogether. Political scientists were pioneering new research on democratization and
the role of non-state and transnational actors. Economists were researching the relationship between
inequality and poverty, political economy, regional integration, and international economics and
finance.19 Anthropologists and sociologists were also discovering new sites of everyday interaction,
including both urban and rural settings, and becoming increasingly aware of the policy dimensions of
their work.
In literature, we were seeing the redefinition of the literary text itself. The subject of inquiry
moved beyond traditional Western narrative forms of poetry, short stories, drama, and novels, and
gave way to a post-modern pastiche of theory and texts that embraced a wide range of expressions of
popular culture and demanded new interdisciplinary tools.
Finally, the quincentennial in 1992 of Columbus‘ so-called ―discovery‖ of America underscored
the necessity of cross-disciplinary approaches that would link the humanities and sciences. In
California, analysis of the impact of the Spanish conquest on indigenous populations acquired new
resonance as the Vatican considered the canonization of Franciscan Father Junípero Serra, who had
established the mission system in California.
The ―broken spears‖ of the Spanish conquest also intersected with new debates about ethnic
identities in the Americas. Highlighting the experiences of Native Americans during the Spanish
conquest complicated identities and representations of U.S. populations of Latin descent, who
experienced stigmatization for their links to brutal Spanish conquerors. These debates eventually
extended to broader questions of the heterogeneity of both conquering and indigenous groups, the
multiple experiences and visions of conquest, and the nature of both conqueror and vanquished.
These debates nourished my own work on the role of gender ideologies and conquest. 20
CONCLUSIONS
I began this talk by discussing the wide variance of Latin American identities. The mystery is
how and why, if the concept of Latin America is so tenuous, so beholden to political and social
constructs that shift over time, it persists with such insistence.
Increasingly, I am coming to believe that where such ―imagined communities‖ exist, shifting borders
are not only possible, but necessary and inevitable. And the endurance of the concept of Latin
American Studies, despite unstable funding sources, and oft-times difficult or unsupportive institutional
arrangements, suggests that there is both a need for and an interest in the survival of the field.
One of the challenges is to maintain both flexibility and cohesion in the midst of multiple
identities and definitions, and to find ways to turn the centrifugal forces of globalization to our
advantage as a field.
17
A second challenge is to move beyond the provincialism of the field and to articulate more
forcefully the relevance of the knowledge produced about and within Latin America to our colleagues
outside of the field. This should not be hard. In the fields of human rights, conflict resolution, and
post-conflict reconstruction, themes that I engage in my work at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Latin
America has much to offer. Inter-American systems--such as the Organization of American States and
the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as well as national bodies such as Colombia‘s
Constitutional Court which reconciles national jurisprudence with international human rights standards,
or human rights ombudsmen (personeros)—have been functioning for decades and constitute unique
regional conflict prevention mechanisms that are shaping human rights conventions, jurisprudence,
and norms. Latin America‘s experiences of dictatorship and resistance have also pioneered the
development of transitional justice practices, including truth commissions, trials, reparations,
memorialization practices, and monuments. These mechanisms have sometimes informed other
peace processes and transitional justice practices in other societies emerging from conflict. With the
exception of Colombia, the region is not at war, in part due to such institutional mechanisms.
Latin America has also pioneered the establishment of minimum quotas for representation of
women and ethnic groups on electoral and political party lists, and women‘s groups are learning how
to hold the system accountable for implementation of these quotas through effective use of the
courts.
Finally, Latin America is a place where the United States experimented with many models of
intervention—neoliberalism, capitalism, democratization, debt restructuring, counterrevolution,
counterinsurgency, counternarcotics, counterterrorism, post-conflict reconstruction, and a range of
economic interventions (health care, social security, privatization). Latin America has several decades
of experience searching for the right balance between security, liberty, and human rights.
Understanding the experiences of Latin America may contribute to developing better practices in the
future.
A third set of challenges relate to professionalization. While most scholars now give at least lip
service to interdisciplinary studies, in practice Latin American Studies tends not to be well served by
current academic structures where incentives and rewards are largely based on contributions to a
discipline and to the individual‘s department. We should continue to look for ways to encourage and
recognize interdisciplinary and collaborative work, and to protect spaces dedicated to this vision.
There are a number of additional steps that could help. First, it is time to survey the field and
assess who we are. Getting a better sense of our collective identity could be an important first step
toward articulating who we want to become as a community of scholars.
Second, it is next to impossible to find basic aggregated or disaggregated data, such as the
numbers of Latin American Studies graduate and undergraduate degree programs, the numbers of
students who have studied in these programs, and the doctoral dissertations that have been produced
in Latin American Studies. This information should be made more easily available, perhaps by the
regional councils or through LASA.
Third, as Latin American Studies comes of age, the field should be looking at equity issues
within its organizations. We should seek out and create opportunities for collaboration with those
whose voices have been marginalized in both the North and South.
Proyecto Otros Saberes, a collaborative research initiative supported by LASA to nurture
connections between civil society practitioners and knowledge producers with university-based
18
researchers—is a positive step toward enhancing the quality, design and the practical applications of
research, creating a more dynamic relationship between scholars and the rest of civil society, and
deepening relationships with our Latin American colleagues.
Growing numbers of Latin Americans are joining LASA, with 25% of its current 5,000
members from outside the United States. This is a start but further efforts are needed to ensure that
our Latin American colleagues are seated at the table as equals. Likewise, we need to continue to
reach out to students to ensure that they are well equipped with critical thinking skills to ask good
questions and sort through the information overload they face. The inclusion of U.S.-based Latin
American scholars at regional council meetings could facilitate this process.
Fourth, it is time to assess the status of women in the field of Latin American Studies. Many,
if not most, professional academic associations have created task forces and produced periodic reports
on the status of women in their disciplines. The Modern Language Association has a Standing
Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession and has produced periodic reports. The
American Anthropological Association released a report on the Status of Women in Anthropology last
year. Since 1992, the American Political Science Association charges a Committee on the Status of
Women in the Profession of Political Science to carry out and publish an assessment every ten years.
While the Organization of American States has an Inter-American Commission on Women that
monitors the status of women in Latin America, there has never been a study of the status of women
in the field of Latin American Studies. This would be a good first step that could perhaps be piloted by
the regional councils, or the councils might call on LASA to contract such a study.
Fifth, we should use global technologies to foster greater collaboration with each other, with
colleagues from the South, and with Latin Americanists from outside this hemisphere. Greater contact
with Latin American Studies centers in other parts of the world will bring different national
perspectives and approaches to the field of Latin American Studies that can help highlight our own
national biases.
Finally, we are charting new terrain in Latin America and in the United States. In the midst of
a catastrophic economic crisis, democracies are thriving, yet vulnerable, throughout the hemisphere.
We have shattered glass ceilings of several kinds and now have popularly elected leaders in Latin
America that include women presidents, a labor leader as President, and an indigenous president. We
have a re-assertion of Latin American leadership on the global scene through mechanisms like
UNASUR, the Andean Community of Nations, CARICOM, and Mercosur. These efforts to exert
collective agency and autonomy are not new. For more than 100 years, Latin Americans have sought
to create institutions (Pan American Union/Organization of American States; International Court of
Justice/Inter American Court of Human Rights) to address the asymmetrical balance of power between
the North and the South.
But the climate today has changed. We have an African American in the White House who
champions the rule of law. International human rights norms are firmly in place. Civil society has
become highly organized. Latin America is diversifying its economy and is less dependent on the
United States.
The field of Latin American Studies has also changed. It has increasingly moved away from
the organization of knowledge through the frame of European influences on the region, or in relation
to U.S. policies toward the region. Instead Latin American and Latin Americanist scholars are seeking
to understand Latin America on its own terms, to understand the multiple prisms and identities that
19
emerge from Latin American realities, and to consider new periodizations that come from the
particular life stories, experiences and trends from the region itself. This shift from previous
paradigms has given Latin Americans a confidence that offers new kinds of opportunities and dangers.
Well-trained Latin Americanists can help sort out the complex new realities on the ground and
help navigate this shift from old patterns of domination to real partnership and collaboration. The
challenges ahead are many—poverty, inequality, injustice, drugs, trade, energy, and immigration, to
name but a few—but the hopes are tremendous and the potential is great.
_________________________
Notes
1
Barbara A. Tenenbaum, Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 3 (New York:
Charles Scribner‘s Sons, 1996): 390.
2
Gabriela Mistral, Victoria Ocampo, Elizabeth Horan, Doris Meyer, This America of Ours (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2003).
3
―A lo que es, allí donde se gobierna, hay que atender para gobernar bien; y el buen gobernante en
América no es el que sabe cómo se gobierna el alemán o el francés, sino el que sabe con qué
elementos está hecho su país, y cómo puede ir guiándolos en junto, para llegar, por métodos e
instituciones nacidas del país mismo, a aquel estado apetecible donde cada hombre se conoce y
ejerce, y disfrutan todos de la abundancia que la Naturaleza puso para todos en el pueblo que
fecundan con su trabajo y defienden con sus vidas.‖ José Martí, Nuestra América (1891).
4
University of Texas at Austin, University of California at Berkeley, Tulane University, Univ. of Florida?
5
―Proseguí… a la estudiosa tarea… de leer y más leer, de estudiar y más estudiar, sin más maestro
que los mismos libros…Con esto proseguí, dirigiendo siempre… los pasos de mi estudio a la cumbre de
la Sagrada Teología; pareciéndome preciso para llegar a ella, subir por los escalones de las ciencias y
artes humanas…‖ In Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, The Answer/La Respuesta, ed. Electa Arenal and
Amanda Powell (New York: Feminist Press, 1994), 5.
6
―I wish I might persuade everyone with my own experience: to wit, that far from interfering, these
subjects help one another, shedding light and opening a path from one to the next, by way of
divergences and hidden links—for they were set in place so as to form this universal chain by the
wisdom of their great Author. Thus it appears that they correspond each one to another and are
united with a wondrous bond and harmonious agreement. This is the very chain the ancients believed
to come forth from the mouth of Jupiter, whence hung all things, each linked to the next.‖
7
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/hlas/salalm.html#top.
8
Muriel Nixon Canfield, ―The Latin American Institute at Southern Illinois University, 1958-1973‖
(Ph.D. diss., Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Dept. of Higher Education, 1984), 21-2.
9
Howard F. Cline, ―The Latin American Studies Association: A Summary Survey with Appendix,‖ LARR
2:1 (1966): 58-59.
10
Nixon Canfield,―The Latin American Institute‖ (Ph.D. diss., Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale, Dept. of Higher Education, 1984),12.
11
Howard F. Cline, ―The Latin American Studies Association: A Summary Survey with Appendix,‖ LARR
2:1 (1966): 58-59.
20
12
They included the Midwest Association of Latin American Studies (1950); Rocky Mountain Council
for Latin American Studies (1953); Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies/ PCCLAS (1950s);
Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies/SECOLAS (1953); and Southwest Council of Latin
American Studies (1966). Seven more LAS centers were created in the 1950s and 60s. University of
Kansas set up an exchange program with Costa Rica in 1959.
13
http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/iegps/history.html.
14
Gilbert W. Merkx, ―Foreword,‖ Latin American Research Review Index 1965-1995, 31:4 (1996): iii.
15
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, CLACS—Email communication from Julie Kline to author,
February 26, 2009; John J. Harrigan, ―Latin American Studies in the Upper Midwest: The Growth of
the North Central Council of Latin Americanists,‖ LARR 14:3 (1979): 169-173.
16
John E. Rielly, American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1983 (Chicago, Ill.: Chicago Council
on Foreign Relations, 1983), 12, at
http://www.ccfr.org/UserFiles/File/POS_Topline%20Reports/Archived%20POS%20Surveys/survey%20
1983.pdf.
17
John E. Rielly, American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy 1991 (Chicago: Chicago Council on
Foreign Relations, 1991) at
http://www.ccfr.org/UserFiles/File/POS_Topline%20Reports/Archived%20POS%20Surveys/survey%20
1991.pdf.
18
Edna Acosta-Belén, ―Revisiting the Concept of Nuestra América in Latino(a) and Latin American
Studies,‖ April 10, 1995, online at
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/latinamerican/revisitingconcept.html.
19
In 1992, economists established the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA).
See LASA Forum, 39:4 (Fall 2008): 14.
20
Virginia M. Bouvier, Women and the Conquest of California, 1542-1840: Codes of Silence (Tucson,
AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2001).
21
A COPYRIGHT-FREE SOURCE OF LATIN AMERICAN VISUALS
1
Jack Child
American University
The scholar, teacher or student searching for relevant visuals to illustrate a paper, article or
presentation, immediately runs into the copyright problem. Every visual has a creator, and the
individual has certain rights regarding the use of this visual. In short, every visual has an owner, and
copyright law and practice protects it from unauthorized use. Proof that the visual was indeed created
by the person claiming copyright can be complicated or simple. The complicated approach involves
registering the visual with a government copyright office. The simple approach relies on publishing the
visual as part of a paper or presentation which can be dated and documented as belonging to the
creator. This paper summarizes the copyright problem and describes approaches to solving it, some
legal and legitimate, and some not.
For written material there is a ―fair use‖ standard, which usually requires recognition of the
copyright owner, and places strict limits on the amount of the original copyright material which can be
used without formal permission.1 This is a relatively simple in the case of written texts, since the
limitation is usually expressed in terms of the percentage of the original which is being used. The ―fair
use provision‖ is especially useful for educators, who can claim the material is used for teaching
purposes only. It helps if the person using the copyright material receives no monetary compensation
for the end product. In other words, any legal action against the unauthorized user of copyright
material is likely to be treated more gently by any enforcing agency if the end product is an article in a
scholarly journal, or an academic presentation for which the individual receives no monetary reward.
visuals the provisions are murky: it is usually not clear what portion or percentage of a visual
can be used under the fair use provision. For any material which is found in a museum or art gallery
another complication arises: museums do not like to release copyright on the items in their collection
using the arguments that the final product might not meet the high standards for reproduction which
they require. Generally, however, the museum involved would be willing to sell an author the desired
visual, but with clear instructions
___________________________________
1
Based on a paper delivered at the 30 March 2009 annual meeting of the Middle Atlantic Council of
Latin American Studies (MACLAS). In this article the author makes use of research and visuals which
formed the basis of his 2008 book (Duke University Press): ―The Semiotics and Politics of Latin
American Postage Stamps.
on how it is to be used. Likewise, any newspaper, TV network or other source of current visuals is
likely to carefully protect copyright, along with a willingness to sell the material under certain
provisions. For a currently relevant photograph or cartoon the amount can be substantial, even for an
22
academic publication with little probability of significant earnings. A charge for a one-time use of a
photograph or cartoon could easily cost a hundred dollars, even with pleas of academic poverty,
making it unlikely that the typical academic would use many items in a publication.
One approach to the copyright problem (not recommended) is to simply go ahead and use
the visual with no attempt to get copyright release. If challenged, the academic violator of copyright
would probably invoke the educational fair use provision. However, if the item is widely and repeatedly
published, and comes to the attention of the copyright owner, the results can be unpleasant, usually
for an academic involving a cease and desist order and withdrawal of the item from the publication. A
lawsuit is possible, but for an academic violator the probable outcome is not to sue the individual
academic, but rather the institution to which he or she belongs. Universities are generally not happy
when this outcome arises when they become the ―deep pockets‖ in a lawsuit originated by a faculty
member or student.
A visual, and for that matter a monograph or article, remains property of the creator except
under certain circumstances which can make copyright protection obsolete and invalid. One
circumstance is time from creation, with the result that material over a certain number of years
(sometimes a hundred years, or perhaps 75 years after the death of the creator) goes into the
―domain‖, which means that anyone can use it for any legitimate purpose, with no requirement other
than recognition of the original source, a requirement that avoids charges of intellectual plagiarism.
For academics working with contemporary projects, this entry by time for creation into the public
domain is of little use because of the long time frame usually involved.
Another way an item enters the public domain is if the originator was a government agency,
or individual working for that agency. In the case of government reports or legislation and associated
documents this path to the public domain is generally accepted, although individual governments are
free to impose any reasonable copyright limitations if they so desire.
With the coming of the Internet, there is a widespread misconception that anything on the
Net is copyright-free. Academics and students are especially drawn to this argument, which is
unfortunately not true. Anything that is placed on the Web still belongs to the creator under general
copyright rules, although this is often violated.
A similar misconception involves new information sources such as Wikipedia. Material (text or
visual) placed on a Wikipedia site is subject to copyright provisions. In the case of Wikipedia, the
editors of this encyclopedia require proof of acceptable copyright, although enforcement of these
requirements is spotty. Wikipedia has a general provision that material submitted was created by the
individual involved.
A somewhat similar situation involves social networks such as Facebook. Most people using
Facebook do not realize that submitting material for publication on Facebook falls under the provision
of a small-print paragraph which passes the copyright from the owner to Facebook itself. In other
words, a photograph taken by an individual of friends engaged in a particular activity could be sold at
a later date by Facebook to an advertiser or a service which provides graphics for a price.
One solution that works, with some limitations, is the humble postage stamp. Stamps are the
product of governments, and unless the visual involved in a stamp is specifically protected by
copyright imposed by the government, it is freely available as public domain material. One interesting
exception to the public domain material is the stamps produced by the U.S. Postal Service, which is a
23
semi-government agency. When the USPS was created in 1978 there was a provision that from that
date on all postage stamps created by the USPS would be copyright and required copyright release if
reproduced anywhere outside the USPS. It soon became clear why the provision was required:
postage stamps appear on a number of items for sale in post offices, such as key chains, souvenirs,
and the like. Even for a non-profit academic use the USPS fee for using a post-1978 stamp can be
significant, ranging from $25 to $100, again making it unlikely that an academic could afford to use
many USPS stamps in a publication or presentation.
However, and fortunately, most postage stamps are in the public domain. For U.S. academics,
there is a legal proviso which established that a foreign postage stamp used in a publication created in
then United States, is in the public domain. There are certain provisions regarding size as protection
against illegal reproduction of stamps.
The technical side has gotten considerably easier in the past ten years. Before that creating
visuals for class or publication use required a special 35mm camera with a stand and lights i. The
camera was a 35mm single-lens reflex, and commercial development of the roll of film could take a
week or so, which made immediate correction impossible. With the advent of the home computer and
a scanner it was now possible to immediately see the results, retake if necessary, and modify or
manipulate the image using Photoshop or similar software. Besides being faster, it was also cheaper
since no film was involved. Once a satisfactory image is achieved the image can be inserted in text (as
in this article) or placed in a Power Point program for presentation in a class or conference.
The section that follows is an attempt to apply the copyright opportunities mentioned above
using stamps in a brief presentation showing how major events in Cuban history, with an emphasis on
the Revolution and its aftermath, can be illustrated with postage stamps. Normally in such a
presentation there would be accompanying written text (in a paper, book chapter or a Power Point
segment) or oral material (in a Power Point presentation) that would explain the significance of the
event or person memorialized in the stamp.
A brief survey of Cuban stamps for pedagogical purposes.
The section that follows is an attempt to apply the copyright opportunities mentioned above
in a brief presentation showing how major events in Cuban history, with an emphasis on the
Revolution and its aftermath, can be illustrated with postage stamps. Normally in such a presentation
there would be accompanying material explaining the significance of the event or person memorialized
in the stamp. This could be written text (in a paper, book chapter or a Power Point presentation) or
oral material (accompanying a Power Point) that would explain the significance of the event or person
memorialized in the stamp.
1. Alfonso XII
2. US surcharge
3. Battle of Mal Tiempo
24
4. T. Roosevelt
The first postage stamp ever was issued by Great Britain in 1840 for a value of one penny
(hence the name ―penny black‖) and featured Queen Victoria. Under Spanish control, the first stamps
of Cuba came out in 1855, and had a design similar to the British penny black, namely a portrait of
Queen Isabella II, the reigning monarch in Spain. Until the 1898 War with the United States, almost all
the stamps of Spain and its possessions (including Cuba) bore the portrait of the monarch at the time,
culminating in Cuba with Alfonso XII (1876 to 1890) and Alfonso XIII (1890 to 1898). A typical stamp
of the time, featuring Alfonso XII is at Fig. 1, (Scott Catalog3 #89). The first stamps under the U.S.
administration of Cuba initially used older Spanish Cuban stamps (from 1896 and 1898) with a
surcharge (added printing) of heavy black ink. In 1899 this shifted to using United States stamps with
two surcharges, the first being ―Cuba‖, and the second indicating the stamp‘s value in Cuban currency
(Fig. 2, Scott #221). The word ―Cuba‖ made it clear these were U.S. stamps issued for use in Cuba.
There was little variation in the surcharges, and because the work ―Cuba‖ is easy to write and
understand, Cuban stamps were spared the numerous variations of surcharges on a number of U.S.
Puerto Rican stamps, including Porto Rico, Porto Ricu, and Forto Rico.
Subsequent pre-Castro stamps in Cuba were relatively undistinguished, and generally
featured historical or geographical themes, for example, the battle of Mal Tiempo, (Fig. 3, #313). The
close relationship with the United States was made evident with stamps honoring Teddy Roosevelt on
the centenary of his birth (Fig. 4, #610), and a pro-Allies World War II stamp warning Cubans of the
dangers of Axis fifth column penetration (Fig. 5, #378).
5. Fifth column
6. Victory
There was a brusque and dramatic change in Cuban stamps with the 1959 coming of the
Revolution. The first stamp of the Revolution (Fig. 6, #613) featured a triumphant guerrilla
brandishing a rifle. The official date of release of this stamp was stated as January 1959, which seems
highly unlikely, since the process of designing and printing a new stamp requires many months. Either
the stamp was prepared as the Revolution‘s conflict entered its final months (unlikely), or the 1959
date of issue is false, used to dramatize the January 1959 end of the War.
25
7. Attack on Moncada
9. Entering Havana
8. Granma landing
10. ―Absolves‖
On the first anniversary of the Revolution an attractive and impressive series of seven stamps
depicting highlights of the Revolutionary struggle was released. These included the attack on the
Moncada Barracks (Fig. 7, #625), the landing of the ―Granma‖ (Fig. 8, #626) and the triumphant
entry into Havana (Fig. 9, #C201). Castro‘s speech ―La historia me absolverá‖ was noted (Fig. 10,
#973), as was the disappearance of Cienfuegos (Fig. 11, #647).
11. Camilo Cienfuegos
12. The doves
13. Che,
integration
26
14. Che, heroic
guerrilla
Castro himself has appeared on stamps in a relatively modest way which included the iconic
vision of white doves landing on his shoulder while giving a speech (Fig. 12, #3983), and his signing
of the Agrarian Reform Law (#4007).
Che Guevara has been featured more often than Castro, sometimes in connection with important
events, such as Latinamerican integration (Fig. 13, #3532), and several on anniversaries of the death
of Che Guevara on ―heroic guerrillas day‖. (Fig. 14, #C262).
15. Celia Sánchez
17. Latin heroes
Other



16. Salvador Allende
18. Pope John Paul
individuals of note include:
Celia Sánchez, Castro‘s longtime confidant (Fig. 15, #3223)
Tamara ―Tania‖ Bunke, who died with Che in Bolivia (#1739)
Salvador Allende (Fig. 16, #2605), with a dramatic background showing the burning
presidential palace
27



Latin American Independence heroes, such as O‘Higgins (Fig. 17, #3065)
The Pope, on occasion of his visit to Cuba (Fig. 18, #3894)
Latin American writers, such as Pablo Neruda (#3151).
19. Friendship with USSR
20. Communist youth
21. Bay of Pigs
22. Vietnam
28
Cuba‘s relations with the Soviet Union were the key to important developments in
Revolutionary Cuba, and found expression in a series of stamps honoring Russia and Cuba‘s friendship
with that nation (Fig. 19, #1152 to 1155). The Soviet Union was also honored with stamps of Lenin
(#1516 to1522), and space heroes (#775 to 779).
23. Ho Chi Minh
24. Angola
25. Guerrillas
Themes which implicitly or explicitly attacked or criticized the U.S. were:
 Several commemorations of the Bay of Pigs (Fig. 21, #706 to 708, #825 to 827, #308)
 The defeat U.S. in Vietnam (Fig. 22, #846 1696 to 1698), and one showing U.S. ―genocide‖ in
Vietnam (#1163).
 Celebration of the birth of Ho Chi Minh (Fig. 23, #1533)
 Cuban victories in Africa (Fig. 24, #4117)
 Support for guerrillas in Latin America (Fig. 25, #3715)
 The Anti-imperialist conference which included the wording of the Declaration of Havana, with
a font that was claimed to be the smallest ever put on a postage stamp (#931 and 932).
 A 2005 stamp honoring the five Cubans arrested in the U.S. for ―terrorist activities‖ (#4539)
27. Dr.Finlay
28. Tobacco
29
29. World Hunger
30. Zafra of 10 million
A series of stamps honoring Dr. Carlos Finlay (Fig. 27, #989 to 995) who the Cubans have long
insisted discovered the cause of yellow fever. The U.S., of course, claims that the honor should belong
to Major Walter Reed. His statue on the grounds of the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington,
DC, makes no mention of Dr. Finlay, although Dr. Reed gave him credit for first suggesting the link
between mosquitoes and yellow fever.
Economic themes included:
 Tobacco (Fig. 28, #1534)
 Campaign against hunger (Fig. 29, #C215)
 The ―zafra‖ of ten million tons of sugar (Fig. 30, #1539)
 Agrarian Reform (#1394)
Visuals celebrating Cuba‘s culture:
 Writers such as Alejo Carpentier (Fig. 31, #3170)
 And painters, notably Wifredo Lam (Fig. 32, #743)
31. Alejo Carpentier
32. Wifredo Lam
33. Cuban penguins
30
Finally, to end on a familiar noteii, a ―Cuban penguins‖ stamp showed three of them admiring
a Soviet nuclear icebreaker in Antarctica (Fig. 33, #1752).
Conclusions
This paper has attempted to reach two related conclusions: that most postage stamps are
copyright-free, and that they can be used to illustrate a number of academic projects: papers, book
chapters, and Power Point presentations. These enterprises could be authored either by researchers,
teachers, or their students. To support the first contention the article explores copyright law as it
relates to using visuals in academic presentations. The second conclusion was illustrated using Cuban
postage stamps to show major events in Cuban history, especially after the 1959 triumph of the
Revolution.
________________________________
1
Endnotes
For a current controversy involving the unauthorized use of a photograph, see ―Furor Over an Obama
Puff Piece‖, Washington Post, 5 August 2009, p. C3. The controversy involves a photograph of
President Barack Obama as a college student smoking a cigarette which was used, without
authorization from the person who took the photograph, in a poster for an organization supporting the
legalization of marijuana (NORML). The Post notes that the caption of the psychedelic poster reads
―Yes, We Cannabis‖ in a play on the words of the Obama campaign.
2
Jack Child, "Preparing and Using 35mm Slides for Teaching Latin American Studies", Hispania, May
1987.
3
The use of Scott Catalog numbers is widespread, especially in the United States. Numbers run
sequentially, with ordinary first class mail having no prefix on the number, and special stamps having
a letter in front of the number. The letter C, for example, indicates airmail stamps. For an example see
Figure 5, Scott number #C34 featuring the poet José Maria Heredia and his poem on Niagara Falls,
which forms part of the stamp.
4
On an Antarctic cruise in 1986 the author observed Cuban doctors serving on a Soviet Antarctic Base
Appendix: obtaining the stamps
For those readers interested in obtaining the stamps mentioned in this paper (or others
illustrating events or personalities in various Latin American countries) the Scott number identifying
the stamp is essential and can be obtained in the standard Scott catalog. Retail stamp dealers can be
found in telephone yellow pages; local stamp clubs may also be identified. The author would be happy
to provide contact information for a dealer specializing in Latin American stamps who supplies
requested stamps by mail. Another source of these images in digital form is Wikipedia (the on-line
encyclopedia) where stamp collectors, including this author, have placed images from numerous
countries.
A further approach is to order all new issues for a particular country of interest as they are released.
The present author has such an arrangement with a dealer for Mexico and Argentina. He also
corresponds directly with the postal administration of places of special interest to him: Falkland Islands
(under British administration), South Georgia (including the South Sandwich Islands), and the British
31
Antarctic Territory. These three postal administrations issue different stamps independently. Argentina
also has used Malvinas themes in a number of its postage stamps, but the postal administration of
these is labeled ―Argentina‖ and not ―Islas Malvinas‖, to reinforce the notion that the Islas Malvinas
are an integral part of Argentina‘s sovereign territory.
32
Juan Espadas Prize:
MACONDO VERSUS MCONDO: REALISMO MÁGICO Y EL PESO DE LA MEMORIA HISTÓRICA
EN THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO
Stephanie Demaree
College of William and Mary
Fukú americanus, or more colloquially, fukú—generally a curse or doom of some kind;
specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World … It‘s perfectly fine if you don‘t believe
in these ―superstitions.‖ In fact, it‘s better than fine—it‘s perfect. Because no matter what
you believe, fukú believes in you.
--Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Ghosts embody the fundamental magical realist sense that reality always
exceeds our capacities to describe or understand or prove and that the
function of literature is to engage this excessive reality, to honor that
which we may grasp intuitively but never fully or finally define.
--Lois Parkinson Zamora, ―Magical Romance/Magical Realism: Ghosts in
U.S. and Latin American Fiction‖
Desde el momento en que el término ―realismo mágico‖ fue aplicado a las obras de Jorge Luís
Borges y Gabriel García Márquez, y luego a otros escritores del Boom latinoamericano, su uso como
etiqueta y como estilo literario ha sido controversial. Franz Roh introdujo el término en 1925 para
describir un estilo artístico pos-expresionista (Roh 15-32), y treinta años después fue utilizado por
Angel Flores para describir la literatura latinoamericana: ―we may claim that Latin America now
possesses an authentic expression, one that is uniquely civilized, exciting, and, let us hope, perennial‖
(Flores, 116); lanzando un debate que continuaría hasta el presente sobre la propuesta del realismo
mágico, y si es de veras una representación válida de la realidad latinoamericana. Por ejemplo, un
movimiento conducido por el escritor chileno Alberto Fuguet en los años 90 reaccionó contra el
realismo mágico, diciendo ―my own world is something much closer to what I call ‗McOndo‘—a world
of McDonald‘s, Macintoshes and condos‖ (Fuguet, ―I Am Not a Magical Realist!‖). Un artículo de 2002
que trata los escritores de la generación ―McOndo‖ aún reclama ―Magical realism…is dead. As dead as
jackbooted generalissimos, as passé as Colombian coffee's poster boy Juan Valdez and his mule‖
(Margolis, ―Is Magical Realism Dead?‖).
Entonces, ¿está muerto el realismo mágico, repuesto por el realismo inquebrantable,
moderno, y urbano de la literatura de McOndo? Después de leer The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar
Wao, escrito en 2007 por el autor dominicano-americano Junot Díaz y ganador del premio Pulitzer,
tengo que argüir que el realismo mágico está vivito y coleando. Aunque no es el ―color by numbers
magical realism‖ que describe Fuguet en su ensayo, al seguir la vida de Oscar de León y la historia de
33
su familia que sufre la opresión del dictador Trujillo y la diáspora a Nueva Yérsey, utiliza muchos
elementos estilísticos que recuerdan el realismo mágico, incluso múltiples narradores, saltos en el
tiempo—a veces en una manera casi cíclica, y por supuesto la apariencia y presencia de elementos
supernaturales, como una mangosta protectora, un hombre sin cara, una encantamiento llamado
―zafa‖, y el fukú, una maldición poderosa que se remonta la llegada de Colón al Nuevo Mundo.
Sin embargo, a pesar de estos usos de la magia y una estructura semejante a García Márquez
o Isabel Allende, el estilo de Díaz de escribir no conforma a ningunas reglas impuestas por autores
anteriores. Escribe en espanglés urbano, mezclando tanto los dos idiomas como el vernáculo de un
―geek‖ de ciencia ficción y de la calle del norte de Nueva Yérsey. Este lenguaje, además de las
referencias constantes a la cultura popular, la fantasía, el Anime, y los libros de historietas
(yuxtapuestos con alusiones a Derek Walcott y García Márquez y notas de píe que informan al lector
de la historia de la República Dominicana), parece tener mucho en común con las obras de McOndo.
¿Cómo es posible que estos dos estilos tan contradictorios puedan estar presentes en la misma
novela? Es indudable que Díaz está consciente de las distintas teorías, porque en el primer capítulo,
mientas describe ―zafa‖ (la contra-maldición del fukú), escribe ―It used to be bigger in the old days,
bigger, so to speak, in Macondo than in McOndo‖ (Díaz 7). Díaz también trata esta idea en una
entrevista. Hablando de la mangosta:
Díaz: That is what I thought was funny because some people have said, oh, this magic
realism bit. And I am like, oh my God, it‘s the exact opposite of it.
Barrios: Macondo versus MacOndo?
Díaz: Right. But also magic realism in a very simple definition is like
using the fantastic to describe the real, and this book argues that the
real is fantastic. Which is very different. (Barrios, ―Guest Interview:
Junot Díaz‖)
En este ensayo, arguyo que los elementos de realismo mágico en The Brief Wondrous Life of
Oscar Wao representan la memoria histórica con que la familia (y por extensión la Republica
Dominicana entera) tiene que enfrentarse, pero que esta memoria está en conflicto constante con la
necesidad de vivir en el presente y con un deseo de olvidar el pasado, representado por la jerga
moderna y urbana y las referencias a la cultura popular. En otras palabras, Díaz mezcla estos dos
estilos latinoamericanos para probar que los dos pueden existir juntos, porque ambos representan
aspectos distintos de América Latina y el conflicto entre la memoria del pasado y la modernidad que
es inherente a la identidad latinoamericana, y en particular a la identidad del inmigrante.
¿Para qué sirve la magia en una saga de la historia de una familia y una nación? El realismo
mágico a menudo se asocia con novelas que narran una historia nacional, y varios eruditos han
comentado en esta tendencia. 1 En el caso de Oscar Wao, la historia es primeramente de la dictadura
brutal de 1930 a 1961 (apoyada por los Estados Unidos) de Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina en la
Republica Dominicana. Díaz describe a Trujillo como ―A portly, sadistic, pig-eyed mulatto who…came
to control nearly every aspect of the DR‘s political, cultural, social and economic life through a potent
(and familiar) mixture of violence, intimidation, massacre, rape, co-optation, and terror‖ (Díaz 2). Este
personaje histórico y a la vez más grande que la realidad provee un fundamento perfecto para el
34
realismo mágico. En su ensayo ―Past-On Stories: History and the Magically Real‖, P. Gabrielle
Foreman explica la relación entre el realismo mágico y la historia nacional/ cultural:
Magical realism, unlike the fantastic or surreal, presumes that the individual requires a bond
with the traditions and faith of the community, that s/he is historically constructed and
connected…Isabel Allende has asserted that magic realism ―relies on a South American
reality: the confluence of races and cultures of the whole world superimposed on the
indigenous culture, in a violent climate. (Foreman 286)
Es por esto que la teoría del realismo mágico se relaciona tan estrechamente con la teoría de poscolonialismo en la literatura.
David Mikics también destaca este aspecto del realismo mágico, pero se enfoca
específicamente en el Caribe: ―The lucid fantasia that the magical realist mode offers is not an
aesthete‘s intoxicant: magical realism appeals to Caribbean writers because it addresses the weight of
historical memory that survives in the day to day life of the West Indies‖ (Mikics, 373). La magia del
realismo mágico es el resultado de la mezcla de cultura y folclor de distintos culturas que ha ocurrido
en el Caribe (y el resto de América Latina), y también de las catástrofes y tragedias (guerras,
genocidio, golpes de estado, desastres naturales, y dictaduras represivas), que no se puede explicar
solamente con el realismo (como dice Díaz en su entrevista: ―the real is fantastic‖, y en su novela:
―What more sci-fi than the Santo Domingo? What more fantasy than the Antilles?‖ [Díaz 6]).
La magia en Oscar Wao tiene exactamente esta relación con la historia y la cultura caribeña;
por ejemplo, la maldición fukú ―came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved…it was
the death bane of the Tainos … it is believed that the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola unleashed the
fukú on the world‖(Díaz 1). Pero el fukú no está solamente vinculado con los orígenes de colonialismo
del Nuevo Mundo; Díaz lo presenta también en relación con Trujillo: ―No one knows whether Trujillo
was the Curse‘s servant or its master, its agent or its principal, but it was clear he and it had an
understanding, that them two was tight. It was believed, even in educated circles, that anyone who
plotted against Trujillo would incur a fukú most powerful …‖ (Díaz 2-3). Díaz no introduce este primer
elemento mágico como embellecimiento o trozo de color local, sino como una catalizador, la causa
posible de catástrofes, tragedias, y injusticias innumerables (incluso el asesinato de JFK [Díaz 3-4]).
Aunque ofrece un argumento, no insista que el lector cree en la fukú ni confesa que lo cree él mismo,
pero es muy claro que es una parte de la realidad única del Caribe.
En la historia de los de Leon, la maldición empieza con Abelard, el abuelo de Oscar. Abelard
tiene una hija hermosa que quiere proteger a toda costa de la violación por Trujillo. 2 Trujillo acusa a
Abelard de hacer un chiste poco apropiado y lo encarcela. Poco después, su esposa y sus dos hijas
mayores mueren en accidentes misteriosos; la única que sobrevive es Beli, la madre de Oscar, todavía
un bebé. En explicar esto, Díaz escribe:
Most folks you speak to prefer the story with a supernatural twist. They believe that not only
did Trujillo want Abelard‘s daughter, but when he couldn‘t snatch her, out of spite he put a
fukú on the family‘s ass. So which was it? you ask. An accident, a conspiracy, or a fukú?
The only answer I can give you is the least satisfying: you‘ll have to decide for yourself. (Díaz
243)
35
Este es solo un ejemplo de la pregunta que Díaz constantemente presenta al lector: ¿qué crees? La
tragedia a causa de una maldición percibe de manera diferente a una tragedia a causa de una
persona, o incluso a una tragedia sin explicación. ¿Puede ser verdad que una maldición es la razón
por la cual Beli tiene que huir de la isla, por la cual se enferma con cáncer, o por la cual Oscar no
puede conseguir chicas? Pero lo que estas preguntas ilustran es realmente que el pasado, o el ―peso
de la memoria histórica‖ tiene un efecto fuerte sobre el presente, una idea que Díaz también trató en
la entrevista ―In Darkness We Meet,‖ en la cual dice ―if you think about it, the shadow of history
doesn‘t go away. It just doesn‘t. You pretend that it‘s your shadow, but it‘s actually a shadow from the
past that‘s very old and very long‖ (Celayo, Shook, & Díaz 16). El fukú es simplemente otra manera
de describir esta sombra del pasado, este peso de memoria histórica.
Otro elemento mágico que pertenece específicamente al Caribe es la Mangosta Dorada, una
bestia mítica que aparece varias veces en la novela cuando los miembros de la familia de León están
en peligro. La primera ocurrencia sucede después de que Beli, la madre de Oscar, es golpeada casi
hasta la muerte en un cultivo de la caña de azúcar, después de un enredo amoroso desastroso con un
gángster casado con una hermana de Trujillo:
And now we arrive at the strangest part of our tale. Whether what follows was a figment of
Beli‘s wracked imagination or something else altogether I cannot say…But no matter what the
truth, remember: Dominicans are Caribbean and therefore have an extraordinary tolerance
for extreme phenomena. How else could we have survived? So as Beli was flitting in and out
of life there appeared at her side a creature that would have been an amiable mongoose if
not for its golden lion eyes and the absolute black of its pelt. (Díaz 149)
La Mangosta entonces le dice a Beli que se levante, pronosticando los niños que va a tener si
sobrevive, y la guía (cantando con voz de mujer) del cultivo de caña hasta un lugar seguro. Nótese
que el narrador no intenta convencer el lector de que este evento realmente ocurrió, sino que enfatiza
que Beli lo cree porque es dominicana, y también que esta ―tolerance for extreme phenomena‖ es su
manera de sobrevivir (en este caso, la aparición de la mangosta literalmente es lo que permite que
Beli sobreviva).
El uso de una mangosta como bestia mítica para proteger la familia es una elección muy
interesante—porque las mangostas no son nativas al Caribe, pero tienen una historia allí casi alegórica
de la llegada de los españoles.3 Las mangostas son famosas porque son tan ágiles y astutas que
pueden matar serpientes venenosas. Fueron introducidas para controlar las poblaciones de ratas y
serpientes en las plantaciones de caña de azúcar, pero como no tienen depredadores naturales, han
llegado a ser pestes que han causado la extinción de múltiples especies, y son portadoras de
enfermedades (Postanowicz, ―Small Indian Mongoose‖). Sin embargo, Díaz describe la mangosta como
―one of the great unstable particles of the Universe and also one of its greatest travelers … the
Mongoose has proven itself to be an enemy of kingly chariots, chains, and hierarchies…many
Watchers suspect that the Mongoose arrived to our world from another, but to date no evidence of
such a migration has been unearthed‖ (Díaz 151). Las leyendas asociadas con la mangosta y la
sugerencia que la mangosta podría ser un extraterrestre invoca a la vez el folclor y la ciencia-ficción,
mezclando otra vez Macondo y McOndo. En una entrevista, Díaz afirma ―The mongoose is funny
36
because he‘s my favorite character. He is the only real character…That character comes out of a
childhood in the Dominican Republic being exposed to mongoose. And you see them and as a kid
you‘ve never seen anything like it‖ (Barrios, ―Guest Interview: Junot Díaz‖). La mangosta por cierto
tiene un significado muy específico a la República Dominicana, y refleja las ideas de Foreman y Mikics
de que el realismo mágico viene de la historia y cultura particular de una región.
La mangosta aparece otra vez cuando Oscar está al punto de saltar del puente de New
Brunswick:
Closed his eyes (or maybe he didn‘t) and there was something right out of Ursula Le Guin
standing by his side. Later, when he would describe it, he would call it the Golden Mongoose,
but even he knew that wasn‘t what it was…Dude had been waiting his whole life for
something like this to happen to him, had always wanted to live in a world of magic and
mystery, but instead of taking note of the vision and changing his ways the fuck just shook
his swollen head. The train was nearer now, and so, before he could lose his courage, he
threw himself down into the darkness. (Díaz 190)
Oscar quiere creer en la magia pero a diferencia de su madre, no le presta atención cuando aparece.
Sin embargo, sobrevive milagrosamente la caída y después le atribuye su decisión al fukú, diciéndole a
su amigo Yunior ―It was the curse that made me do it, you know (Díaz 194).‖ A pesar de las
protestas de Yunior que no cree en ―esa mierda‖, que pertenece a sus padres, Oscar insiste que
pertenece a ellos también. El hecho de que haya tenido la misma visión que su madre años antes
ciertamente sugiere que su generación, aunque este afuera de la RD, todavía es afectada por su
magia, sea mala como el fukú, o buena como la de la mangosta, cuya propuesta principal en la novela
es dar los personajes una razón de vivir cuando están al punto de rendirse.
Si el fukú representa la memoria histórica de la tragedia y la mangosta representa la
esperanza para el futuro, ¿para qué sirve la ―zafa‖, la contra-maldición? Díaz lo describe como un tipo
de amuleto de buena suerte, pero lo interesante es que hay muchos eventos en la novela en las
cuales no es obvio si el fukú o la zafa son responsables. Por ejemplo: ―There are still many, on and
off the Island, who offer Beli‘s near-fatal beating as irrefutable proof that the House Cabral was indeed
victim of a high-level fukú…But other heads question that logic, arguing that Beli‘s survival must be
evidence to the contrary‖ (Díaz 152). Otra vez Díaz presenta ambos lados del argumento e insiste en
que el lector decida el significado de lo que ocurre. Pero su creencia en el poder de zafa es más
obvio; en la introducción escribe ―Even now as I write these words I wonder if this book ain‘t a zafa of
sorts. My very own counterspell‖ (Díaz 7). Para Díaz, el acto de escribir es una manera de luchar
contra el fukú, o en otras palabras: el acto de enfrentarse la historia le deja sobrevivir en el presente.
La generación más joven de la novela (Oscar, Lola, y Yunior) tienen métodos suyos para
sobrevivir la vida en Nueva Yérsey urbano, que no tienen nada que ver con sus raíces dominicanas.
Lola, por ejemplo, cuando no puede llevarse bien con su madre Beli (que después de una vida de
trabajo, sufrimiento, y hombres que la dejan se ha vuelto amargada y abusiva), se rebela; se corta el
pelo y se hace una chica punk: ―she‘d turned into one of those tough Jersey dominicanas, a longdistance runner who drove her own car, had her own checkbook, called men bitches, and would eat a
fat cat in front of you without a speck of vergüenza‖ (Díaz 24-25). Yunior, por otro lado, es el clásico
Don Juan bravucón, un escritor como Oscar, pero su ficción es ―all robberies and drug deals and Fuck
37
you, Nando, and BLAU! BLAU! BLAU!‖ (Díaz 173), mientras Oscar ―Could write in Elvish, could speak
Chakobsa, could differentiate between a Slan, a Dorsai, and a Lensman in acute detail, knew more
about the Marvel Universe than Stan Lee, and was a role playing game fanatic…Dude wore his
nerdiness like a Jedi wore his Light saber‖ (Díaz 21). Estas descripciones tienen mucho más que ver
con las descripciones de McOndo: ―a global, mixed, diverse, urban, 21st-century Latin America,
bursting on TV and apparent in music, art, fashion, film, and journalism, hectic and unmanageable‖
(Fuguet 69), y ―a contemporary Latin American literary trend of gritty, urban realism…the characters
… are middle-class city dwellers with TV sets and Internet connections‖ (Aviv, ―One Hundred Years of
Solitudue—On Crack‖). Este ―realismo urbano‖ y la magia folclórica, que a veces se yuxtaponen en
una misma página de la novela, aparentemente no deben ser capaces de existir juntos, pero a pesar
de vivir en el presente, estos tres personajes jóvenes no pueden arreglar sus vidas sin enfrentarse el
pasado que la magia representa.
Por ejemplo, Lola, después de escaparse de casa con un hombre, es mandada por su madre a
la RD para que se quede con su tía abuela, La Inca, un personaje cuya capaz de nunca envejecer a la
vez recuerda a la gran matriarca Úrsula de Cien años de soledad y la reina de los elfos Galadriel de El
señor de los anillos. Allí La Inca le cuenta a Lola la historia de su madre, su paliza terrible y su
supervivencia milagrosa, y aunque saber esto no arregla completamente su relación con su madre,
Lola deja de rebelarse y continúa su vida más feliz que todos los demás personajes, yendo a Rutgers y
años después casándose y dando luz a una hija. El fukú no parece tener ningún poder sobre ella, y el
único momento en que lo menciona, después de morir su primer amor en un accidente, dice ―The
curse, some of you will say. Life, is what I say. Life‖ (Díaz 210). Por entender el pasado de su madre
puede aceptar el presente y continuar su vida sin el peso de la memoria histórica para impedirla.
Las cosas no son tan fáciles para Oscar, cuyo problema más frecuente (y la causa de sus
intentos de suicidio) es el amor no correspondido. Se enamora múltiples veces en la vida de varias
chicas inalcanzables y nunca logra a besar ninguna de ellas. En un intento de explicar esta
―nerdiness‖ que es tan ―un-dominican,‖ Díaz escribe:
It might have been a consequence of being Antillean (who more sci-fi
than us?) or of living in the DR for the first few years of his life and then
abruptly wrenchingly relocating to New Jersey—a single green card
shifting not only worlds (from Third to First) but centuries (from almost
no TV or electricity to plenty of both). After a transition like that I‘m
guessing only the most extreme scenarios could have been satisfied…
Or was it deeper, something ancestral? (Díaz 21-22)
Por cierto esta transición tan abrupta del Macondo de la RD al McOndo de Nueva Yérsey debe ser la
causa obvia de los problemas de Oscar, y esto es lo que afirma A. O. Scott en su reseña de la novela,
―Dreaming In Spanglish‖. Escribe:
The incongruity between Oscar‘s circumstances and his background…is
the real subject of ―The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.‖ This is,
almost in spite of itself, a novel of assimilation, a fractured chronicle of
the ambivalent, inexorable movement of the children of immigrants
38
toward the American middle class, where the terrible, incredible stories
of what parents and grandparents endured in the old country have
become a genre in their own right. (Scott, ―Dreaming in Spanglish‖)
Pero los problemas de Oscar no son los típicos de inmigrantes de la segunda generación, no es ―one
of those Dominican cats everybody‘s always going on about—he wasn‘t no home-run hitter or a fly
bachatero, not a playboy with a million hots on his jock‖ (Díaz, 11). Lola y Yunior son más semejantes
a los niños de inmigrantes en otras novelas de asimilación y más representativas de las cuestiones
―típicas‖ de inmigrantes jóvenes. Oscar no le echa la culpa de sus problemas a su transición a los
Estados Unidos, ni a su madre, ni aún a los chicos que se le burlan en la escuela, sino al fukú. Según
otra reseña de Roberto Ontiveros, ―Oscar de Leon is worth lamenting because he is a new kind of
American, the immigrant that has assimilated to the point where he fits in nowhere‖ (Ontiveros, ―A
Fusion of Atractiveness‖). Esta descripción me parece más exacta, porque el problema de Oscar no es
que no pueda asimilarse a los Estados Unidos, sino que la asimilación no le hace feliz.
Al fin, como Lola, Oscar viaja a Santo Domingo, buscando respuestas e inspiración por su
escritura, pero encuentra el amor por última vez ―with a semiretired puta. Her name was Ybón
Pimentel. Oscar considered her the start of his real life‖ (Díaz 279). Como nota Greg Barrios en su
reseña de la novela, en este personaje está presente otra vez una referencia al realismo mágico, que
Yunior apuntó:
I know what Negroes are going to say. Look, he‘s writing Suburban Tropical now. A puta and
she‘s not an underage snort-addicted mess? Not believable. Should I go down to the Feria
and pick me up a more representative model?...But then I‘d be lying. I know I‘ve thrown a
lot of fantasy and sci-fi into the mix but this is supposed to be a true account of the Brief
Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Can‘t we believe that an Ybón can exist and that a brother like
Oscar might be due a little luck after 23 years? (Díaz 285)
Con Ybón, Díaz subvierte los estereotipos de prostitutas que generalmente aparecen en la literatura de
McOndo con un personaje que se parece más a las prostitutas de García Márquez, sugiriendo que
todas reglas tienen sus excepciones, y así que ni el realismo mágico ni McOndo son representaciones
irrefutables de América Latina.
En el amor (finalmente reciprocado) de Ybón, Oscar encuentra la felicidad, pero hay un
problema: Ybón tiene un novio, un capitán de la policía que también estaba en la policía clandestina
de Balaguer. Cuando descubre a Oscar y Ybón besándose, el novio manda a sus amigos a que lleven
a Oscar a los cultivos de caña de azúcar dónde le dan una paliza que casi lo mata (las circunstancias
son notablemente semejante a la paliza de su madre años antes). Oscar sobrevive (después de otra
vista de la Mangosta) y su familia lo lleva a Nueva Yérsey, pero su amor por Ybón le conduce a Santo
Domingo otra vez, donde (¡finalmente!) tienen relaciones íntimas. Poco después, es descubierto por
el capitán y esta vez sus amigos lo matan.
Los intentos fracasados de la familia por presentar cargos contra los asesinos son la
ilustración definitiva del efecto del Trujillato en los dominicanos; cómo dice Lola después de jurar que
nunca regresará a la RD, ―Ten million Trujillos is all we are‖ (Díaz, 324). Sin embargo, parece que
antes de su muerte Oscar encontró unas respuestas. En su viaje final a la RD, investiga la historia de
39
su familia y escribe un libro. En su carta final a su hermana le dice ―watch out for another package.
This contains everything I‘ve written on this journey. . . You‘ll understand when you read my
conclusions. (It‘s the cure to what ails us, he scribbled in the margins. The Cosmo DNA)‖ (Díaz, 333).
Pero Díaz no le da respuestas al lector; el paquete nunca llega. Quiere que el lector descubra sus
propias respuestas y decida por sí mismo. Lo que es importante es que Oscar, al enfrentarse a su
pasado, finalmente puede vivir en el presente (y no en sus fantasías).
Con su mezcla de estructura y elementos de realismo mágico con las referencias a la cultura
popular y el lenguaje moderno que la generación McOndo debería elogiar, Díaz hace comentarios
sobre los dos estilos de ficción más famosos de América Latina mientras crea un estilo completamente
suyo que reconoce el gran peso de la memoria histórica y puede conectarse a la vez con un público
moderno. Las reseñas, por su mayor parte, están de acuerdo: Alice O‘Keefe escribe:
With its flights of surreal fantasy and its street-wise attitude, Oscar Wao belongs to a
generation of Latin American-influenced writing that, to paraphrase Díaz, is ‗more McOndo
than Macondo‘. A product of the lives of Latinos in the US, who are increasingly self-confident
and culturally influential, it incorporates some of magical realism‘s magic, but none of its
dewy-eyed nostalgia. (O‘Keefe, 58)
Una reseña del New York Times Book Review dice que el libro es ―a young-adult melodrama draped
over a multigenerational immigrant family chronicle that dabbles in tropical magic realism, punk-rock
feminism, hip-hop machismo, post-postmodern pyrotechnics and enough polymorphous
multiculturalism to fill up an Introduction to Cultural Studies syllabus‖ (Scott, ―Dreaming in
Spanglish‖). Otra llama la novela ―a big picture window that opens out on the sorrows of Dominican
history, and a small, intimate window that reveals one family‘s life and loves…a book that decisively
establishes Díaz as one of contemporary fiction‘s most distinctive and irresistible new voices‖
(Kakutani,, ―Travails of an Outcast‖). La novela se recibió muy bien en la República Dominicana
también. Un artículo muy interesante del Diario Libre, un periódico dominicano, cita el comentario de
Sergio Ramírez, un autor nicaragüense, sobre Díaz y The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao:
Observó que a ambos [Díaz y otro autor latino Daniel Alarcón], en su condición de
emigrantes, o hijos de emigrantes, se identifican ‗todavía más por otro factor que llevan en
sus propios genes literarios: los fantasmas de la realidad latinoamericana que nos persiguen a
todos, escribamos en español o en inglés…Yesos fantasmas traspasan las fronteras de
Estados Unidos como tantos otros clandestinos, escondidos en los genes, o en el equipaje de
los emigrantes que un día serán escritores de primera línea‘ (Mercado, ―Sergio Ramírez: ¿Se
escribirá la nueva novela latinoamericana en inglés?‖)
Las palabras de Ramírez reflejan exactamente lo que se representa en The Brief Wondrous Life of
Oscar Wao por el uso (y a veces la subversión) del realismo mágico. El fukú, la sombra del pasado, el
peso de memoria histórica, o ―los fantasmas de la realidad latinoamericana que nos persiguen a
todos,‖ como se quiera llamar; existe, y por esa razón, aunque la América Latina de hoy en día es más
un McOndo que un Macondo, el realismo mágico sigue vivo.
__________________________
40
Notas
1
Por ejemplo, Gabrielle P. Foreman en su artículo ―Past-On Stories: History and the Magically Real:
Morrison and Allende on Call,‖ Lois Parkinson Zamora en ―Magical Romance/Magical Realism: Ghosts
in U.S.and Latin American Fiction,‖ and David Mikics en ―Derek Walcott and Alejo Carpentier: Nature,
History, and the Caribbean Writer‖
2
Es referencia directa a la historia caribeña—en una nota de píe, Díaz apunta las semejanzas entre
―The Girl Trujillo Wanted‖ y la leyenda de Anacaona, la india más hermosa del mundo, matado por los
españoles (244).
3
―Operation Mongoose‖ también fue el nombre del plan de CIA para desestabilizar a Cuba durante la
administración de Kennedy. (Wikipedia, ―Operation Mongoose‖).
Obras Citadas
Aviv, Rachel. ―One Hundred Years of Solitude—on crack‖. Salon.com, (January,
2004).
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2004/01/21/mcondo/
Barrios, Gregg. ―Guest Interview: Junot Díaz‖. San Antonio Express-News.
October 21, 2008.
-------―The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao‖. San Antonio Express-News.
September 4, 2007.
Celayo, Armando, David Shook and Junot Díaz. ―In Darkness We Meet: A
Conversation with Junot Díaz‖. World Literature Today 82 (Mar/Apr
2008): 14-19.
Céspedes, Diógenes, Silvio Torres-Saillant and Junot Díaz. ―Fiction is the Poor
Man‘s Cinema: An Interview with Junot Diaz‖. Callaloo 23 (Summer
2000): 892-907.
Díaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead Books,
2007.
Flores, Angel. ―Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction‖. pp 109-124.
Magical Realism: Theory, History,Community. Duke University Press.
1995.
Foreman, P. Gabrielle. ―Past-On Stories: History and the Magically Real,
Morrison and Allende on Call‖. pp 285-303. Magical Realism: Theory, History,Community.
Duke University Press. 1995.
41
Fuguet, Alberto. ―Magical Neoliberalism‖. Foreign Policy 125 (July-August,
2001): 66-73.
--------―I am not a magic realist!‖ Salon.com, (June 1997). http://www.salon.com/
june97/magical970611.html
Kakutani, Michiko. ―Travails of an Outcast‖. The New York Times Book Review.
(September, 2007).
Margolis, Mac. ―Is Magical Realism Dead?‖ Newsweek. (May 2002).
Mercado, ―Sergio Ramírez: ¿Se escribirá la nueva novela latinoamericana en
inglés?‖ Diario Libre. October 09, 2008.
http://www.diariolibre.com/noticias_det.php? id=172596
Mikics, David. ―Derek Walcott and Alejo Carpentier: Nature, History, and the
Caribbean Writer‖. pp 374-404. Magical Realism: Theory,
History,Community. Duke University Press. 1995.
O‘Keeffe, Alice. ―Spanglish Surrealism‖. New Statesman 137 (Feb 2008): 58.
Ontiveros, Roberto. ―A Fusion of Attractiveness‖. American Book Review 29 (July/
August 2008): 14.
Roh, Franz. ―Magical Realism: Post-Expressionism‖. pp 15-31. Magical Realism:
Theory, History,Community. Duke University Press. 1995.
Scott, A. O. ―Dreaming in Spanglish‖. The New York Times Book Review.
(September, 2007).
Simpkins, Scott. ―Sources of Magical Realism/Supplements to Realism in
Contemporary Latin American Literature‖. pp 145-159. Magical Realism: Theory,
History, Community. Duke University Press. 1995.
Zamora, Lois Parkinson. ―Magical Romance/Magical Realism: Ghosts in U.S.
and Latin American Fiction‖. pp 498-550. Magical Realism: Theory,
History, Community. Duke University Press. 1995.
42
Street Prize Essay 2010:
INTERTEXTUALIDAD Y LA CONTRUCCIÓN DEL IMAGINARIO DEL DELITO URBANO EN UN
CAPITÁN DE LADRONES EN BUENOS AIRES (1879) DE EDUARDO GUTIÉRREZ
Carlos Rodríguez McGill, Ph. D.
University of Michigan-Dearborn
Eduardo Gutiérrez inaugura su carrera como escritor profesional en
1879 con la publicación de Un capitán de ladrones en Buenos Aires, en el periódico La Patria
Argentina.1 El relato de la vida delictiva de Antonio Larrea se convierte en el primer folletín policial de
un prolífico corpus literario que abarca un total de treinta y siete obras. Sin embargo, Gutiérrez es
recordado y canonizado en la literatura argentina, en mayor medida, debido a su segundo folletín
publicado ese mismo año, o sea por su Juan Moreira.
Si los críticos literarios de aquella época fueron muy duros es su crítica de la producción
folletinesca de Gutiérrez en general, ellos reservan sus más ásperas críticas para el ciclo policial, como
deja anotado Ricardo Rojas en su Historia de la literatura argentina:
He querido con mi clasificación, tentar un agrupamiento más lógico;
[Denominaré] policiales a los relatos donde ni lo histórico ni lo gauchesco ocupan el plano
principal de la acción, aunque ello se mezcle a veces con el agrupamiento de crímenes,
estafas y pesquizas que suelen dar su tema a esta serie. [...] a ―los policiales‖, en los cuales
sería inútil buscar otra cosa que el interés folletinesco de la gruesa intriga, en ellos
encontrada y gozaba, ciertamente, por sus lectores del actual suburbio porteño. [...] pero es
tan innegable su interés social, por el éxito popular que ellos lograron y aun mantienen, que
sería vano prurito el querer suprimirlos con un gesto de desdén aristocrático. (587)
Esta opinión peyorativa sobre la obra de Gutiérrez ha sido compartida por Anderson Imbert,
Bosch, Castagnino, Ghiano, Giusti, Ingenieros, García Mérou, Pagés Larraya, Quesada y Yunque, esta
lista no es exhaustiva. Sin embargo, unos cincuenta años más tarde, Jorge Lafforgue y Jorge B. Rivera
comienzan el proceso de reivindicación de la serie policial de Eduardo Gutiérrez, junto a las obras de
Paul Groussac, Fray Mocho, Eduardo L. Holemberg y Vicente Rossi, como ―precursores del cuento
policial en la Argentina‖ (Asesinos de papel 31-3). Sin embargo, más importante que lo anterior, es la
confesión de Roberto Giusti cuando afirma que ―todos leíamos a Gutiérrez‖ (182), que junto con José
Hernández, eran los dos autores nacionales más leídos en aquellos días.
Como punto de partida el presente trabajo se propone un rastreo textual para seguirle la pista
a las múltiples conexiones intertextuales desde las cuales Gutiérrez va construyendo su primer folletín
policial. Para los objetivos del presente estudio entendemos el proceso de intertextualidad de la
siguiente manera:
43
Intertextuality can be said to arise when literary texts connect with other literary texts, with
nonliterary texts, and broadly conceived cultural contexts. It comprises a historical component
in the relation between new cultural productions and earlier ones and includes a notion of
activity, by any consumer on any text and by producers on the texts with which new ones are
intertextual.2 (Mautner 460)
Igualmente intentaremos comprobar cómo el discurso hegemónico y pedagógico –en el sentido que
le otorga Homi K. Bhabha3− se enquista dentro de la narrativa de Gutiérrez y va forjando un nuevo
imaginario del delito, ya sólidamente localizado en la babilónica Buenos Aires de finales del siglo
diecinueve.
El entretejido intertextual en Un Capitán de ladrones en Buenos Aires: desde Europa hacia
Latinoamérica
Gutiérrez se ubica como el legatario argentino de aquella novela policial folletinesca que iniciara
Emile Gaboriau en la Francia de 1850 y que en su aclimatación al contexto social argentino produce
una incipiente transculturación (El folletín 49). Así, Gutiérrez comienza su primera novela por entregas
conectándose intertextualmente con Alejandro Dumas (1802-1870), e incorpora la obra máxima del
género folletinesco, es decir El conde de Montecritsto en el interior de su narración (El folletín 50).
Veamos como presenta al protagonista, aquel famoso personaje ladrón, Antonio Larrea:
Antonio Larrea era un ladrón consumado, pero un ladrón fino, capaz de robarle las narices al
mismo jefe de Policía, y pasionista de la punga.
Su lectura era el ―Conde de Montecristo‖, libro que leía al extremo de saberlo de memoria,
pues decía que algún día uno de esos tiros lo había de convertir en un segundo Montecristo.
(Un capitán de ladrones en Buenos Aires 5)
En su elaboración de Antonio Larrea, Gutiérrez toma como punto de referencia, o anclaje referencial, a
un personaje ya establecido y reconocido por el público lector, fijando una conexión con el famoso
Edmundo Dantes -el conde de Montecristo. De este modo, Gutiérrez le da más credibilidad y peso
narrativo a su primer folletín policial al conectarlo con la obra máxima del género. Cada vez que
Gutiérrez quiere profundizar su descripción de Larrea, lo vincula con otros personajes folletinescos de
la época, tales como los famosos ladrones de Fernández y González.4 Detengámonos en su
descripción:
Capitán de ladrones a caballo, Larrea tenía asolados los caminos, queriendo hacer reproducir
en sí las famosas hazañas del novelesco
Juan Palomo y Diego Corriente, tipos ennoblecidos con un gusto detestable, por la rancia
literatura en que se enviciaron escritores
como Fernández y González y otros que lo siguieron en ese camino pésimo. (Un capitán de
ladrones en Buenos Aires 6)
44
En su serie policial, Gutiérrez va montando una red simbólica sobre las bases literarias del
folletín europeo, es decir que va elaborando sus personajes sobre los pilares de un simbolismo ya
establecido. Nuestro autor conecta a Antonio Larrea con Juan Palomo y con Diego Corriente, debido a
que estas redes intertextuales se mantenían vivas en la memoria popular residual de su público, y a
través de ellas, podía interpelar al público lector.
Esto significa que en su serie policial Gutiérrez adopta el mismo procedimiento de producción
intertextual que utilizara en sus ciclos gauchesco
e histórico. Recordemos que en las novelas gauchescas, Juan Moreira está conectado
intertextualmente con Santos Vega y Anastasio el Pollo. Más aún, Moreira se convertirá en el punto de
referencia para los futuros héroes gauchescos e históricos de los folletines de Gutiérrez, en lo que
calificamos como un movimiento intratextual, de modo que Moreira quedará ligado a cada uno de los
folletines del ciclo gauchesco e histórico (Rodríguez McGill 73).
Pero a diferencia del Moreira de la serie gauchesca, los imaginarios del delito urbano que Gutiérrez va
elaborando en su serie policial (Antonio Larrea,
El Jorobado, La negra Nemesia y Serapio Borches de la Quintana, entre otros)
no tendrán aquella trascendencia intratextual –o sea la filtración de un folletín al próximo folletín- que
consiguiera el mítico Juan Moreira.
El capitán de ladrones Antonio Larrea se vincula intertextualmente con sus ascendientes
folletinescos como Juan Palomo, Diego Corriento y sobre todo con Edmundo Dantes, pero su historia
queda enmarcada y contenida en Un capitán de ladrones en Buenos Aires. La incorporación
intertextual de El conde de Montecristo, como la lectura predilecta de Larrea, se describe, en un
principio, de la siguiente manera:
Estaba triste y abismado en sus propios recuerdos; no hacía más que leer se libro favorito El
Conde de Montecristo, y dirigir de cuando en cuando alguna pregunta trivial a la persona que
le alcanzaba el alimento. (Un capitán de ladrones en Buenos Aires 126)
Hacia el final de la novela Gutiérrez acentúa el fatalismo romántico del folletín, con la muerte del
padre de Larrea y el suicido de su esposa en España, lo que lleva al héroe a perder la cordura y, en
una suerte de efecto Quijote, creer ser el mismo conde de Montecristo:
-Este, comparado conmigo, decía, golpeando sobre el tomo del Conde de Montecristo,- éste
es un desgraciado que al lado mío no era más que un mendigo. Yo poseo riquezas inmensas
que me permiten contar el oro, no por cantidades, como él, sino por toneladas. [...]-Díganme
ustedes, ¿Montecristo podía permitirse acciones como esta? No, seguramente, porque se
hubiera quedado en la ―última miseria. [...] Al hacer estos relatos, los ojos de Larrea se
dilataban y tomaban una vaguedad dolorosa: su fisonomía idiotizada, hacía creer estaba bajo
un ataque de enajenación mental, y pasando su mano sobre el ejemplar del Montecristo, lo
trataba de miserable pobrete, soltando una carcajada seca y estridente, que movía a
compasión a aquellos que presenciaban tales escenas. [...] Fue llamado el doctor Santillán,
quien lo reconoció con suma atención, declarando realmente que aquel hombre extraordinario
estaba bajo aquella locura conocida como el delirio de las grandezas, que es una de las más
raras de la ciencia. (Un capitán de ladrones en Buenos Aires 128-9)
45
Este trágico final pone en relieve el tono ficticio de la obra, ejemplar de todo su ciclo policial ( Eduardo
Gutiérrez 40). La ficción también se acentúa mediante la construcción del personaje, pues Larrea es
un ladrón incorregible que ha cometido asesinatos en dos continentes, se casa tres veces y al finalizar
sus robos deja notas para la policía con el objetivo de que la fama de sus hazañas le sea reconocida:
El dinero que falta de aquí, se halla depositado en el Banco de Antonio Larrea y compañía,
según lo declaro y lo firmo. Antonio Larrea. (Un capitán de ladrones en Buenos Aires 24)
Esta burla a la policía parecería anotar un desafío subalterno a la autoridad que lo persigue,
pero el trágico final y su encarcelamiento, el suicidio de su esposa y su delirio final, robustece el efecto
del discurso pedagógico nacional. Es decir que el modelo de comportamiento que predica el folletín
tiende a fortalecer las normas conservadoras de conducta (El folletín 61). Por lo cual, si en un principio
provoca y agita al lector, al final lo pacifica, en tanto el desenlace narrativo responderá a lo esperado y
le devolverá la paz (Martín Barbero 152). De este modo Gutiérrez comienza a hilvanar un discurso
pedagógico nacional subyacente que paulatinamente va instalando en su público ―la trampa populista‖
y moralizante:
Todo lo que tiene aún no teniendo nada y de lo que se libra por no ser rico, con la
consiguiente moraleja: hay cosas más importantes que el dinero, así que cada cual
permanezca en el sitio que está. (Martín
Barbero 150)
En guerra consigo mismo pues, como afirma Martín Barbero, la novela problematiza al lector
mientras que ―la novela popular tiende a la paz‖, y el conformismo necesario para la paz social (Martín
Barbero 152). Pero, antes de entrar de lleno a nuestro análisis sobre la articulación del discurso
pedagógico nacional, es necesario mencionar que la ficción popular se caracteriza por una dialéctica
entre lo conocido (el conde de Montecristo, Juan Palomo y Diego Corriente) y lo desconocido (la nueva
versión, o sea en este caso Antonio Larrea) que va construyendo un significado y placer nuevos en el
proceso de lectura.
En el goce que el sujeto recibe en este proceso de renovación y reconocimiento (de lo viejo en lo
nuevo) reside, precisamente, la enorme capacidad de resistencia y persistencia tan característica de lo
popular. A propósito de lo anterior, Martín Barbero señala que uno de los rasgos más característicos
de la cultura popular reside en su gusto por la ―repetición‖ y en el ―reconocimiento‖ textual (232).
Permítaseme proporcionar una última una aproximación al concepto de lo popular, debido a que este
concepto está íntimamente ligado a nuestro estudio: ―Popular culture is built on repetition, for no one
text is sufficient, no text is a complete object. The culture consists only of meanings and pleasures in
constant process‖ (Fiske126).
“Enseñar” deleitando: El discurso pedagógico nacional y la elaboración del imaginario
urbano del delito
La novela popular de Gutiérrez también va paulatinamente construyendo su discurso
pedagógico nacional mediante la utilización de proclamas xenófobas y clasistas, al caracterizar sus
46
delincuentes, en su mayoría, como inmigrantes españoles o italianos. Así se describe el prontuario
criminal de Larrea:
Larrea era un criminal fugado de los presidios de Europa, adonde lo habían llevado sus
crímenes y asombrosa afición por lo ajeno, al extremo de llegar hasta capitanear una cuadrilla
de ladrones de camino.
Natural de Valladolid, Larrea desde joven se
había entregado a la punga, con bastante facilidad, reclamado en Buenos Aires por las
autoridades de España, se supo algo de su vida, que el lector puede calcular como sería,
leyendo esta última hazaña que hizo allí. (Un capitán de ladrones en Buenos Aires 5-6)
Tanto la vida criminal de Larrea como el folletín del autor porteño no comienzan con su
llegada a la Argentina, sino que se originan en España y se desplazan primero hacia Montevideo, para
luego concluir la narración en Buenos Aires. Con el objetivo de poner énfasis sobre la criminalidad de
Larrea, se relata la última fuga carcelaria del criminal español, antes de emigrar hacia el Uruguay:
Abrieron la puerta del calabozo, pero Larrea no estaba allí; se le buscó por todo
inútilmente: se había fugado sin ser sentido se le buscó por todo inútilmente: se había fugado
sin ser sentido por persona alguna; un papel había dejado en el calabozo clavado con un
alfiler en la pared.
Aquel papel, con una hermosa letra española, decía:‖Me mando a mudar a otra
parte, por que yo no he nacido para ser adorno de horca. Búsqueseme, sin embargo, en casa
de Joselito Salat, mi delator‖.
[...]Joselito tenía la boca llena de sangre, sangre que le salía del tronco de la lengua. Larrea
había estado allí y su venganza había sido espantosa: había cortado la lengua de su delator.
Tres días después de esto, Joselito Salat murió en el hospital adonde fue conducido, y la
autoridad catalana no volvió a saber más de Antonio Larrea.
Estos datos son exactos, pues los recogemos de las diversas causas que figuran en su
voluminoso sumario. (Un capitán de ladrones en Buenos Aires 7)
Numerosos crímenes como el anterior se llevarán a cabo en Montevideo, donde es
encarcelado por cinco años, pero una vez más Larrea logra fugarse y, en 1874, emigra hacia la
Argentina. En Buenos Aires continúa con sus estafas y actos delictivos, pero su arresto y encarcelación
definitiva no son el producto de una captura policial por los crímenes antedichos, sino que se debe a
su hallazgo fortuito cuando se casa y se descubre su bigamia. Cuando su esposa española se entera
de su reciente casamiento en Buenos Aires, viaja a la Argentina y lo delata a la policía porteña, no sin
antes enfrentarse con Amalia, la esposa
porteña. Detengámonos en la revelación:
leona.
La castellana estaba altiva. Amalia abatida: era una gacela luchando contra una
[...]-Sucede- respondió la castellana sonriendo de una manera infernal y dejando ver
al sonreír una doble fila de blanquísimos dientes,-sucede que yo soy la esposa de Juan Martín
Larrea, casado con usted bajo el nombre de su hermano Larrea, casamiento que es nulo por
47
que yo soy su mujer desde hace siete años, mientras usted lo es sólo de siete meses a esta
parte.
Un rayo caído a los pies de Amalia no habría dejado tan helada de espanto como
aquella revelación: se desplomó como un cadáver y rompió a llorar de una manera
conmovedora, retorciendo sus brazos con una desesperación irresistible. (Un capitán de
ladrones en Buenos Aires 58-9)
Observemos que la esposa española de Larrea no tiene un nombre propio, se alude a ella
exclusivamente como ―la castellana‖, es decir, como metáfora genérica del inmigrante y, sin olvidar
tampoco, que se la pinta como ―una leona‖, adjetivación que denota fiereza, animalidad, primitivismo.
Como contrapartida, Gutiérrez nos presenta a la argentina Amalia, personaje que también es retratado
sin darnos su apellido, para ―proteger su reputación‖, como explica Gutiérrez, lo cual implica su
pertenencia a una familia de abolengo (Un capitán de ladrones en Buenos Aires 39). Amalia, nombre
que tiene una larga trayectoria en el folletín argentino, es ―la gacela‖ criolla que no puede enfrentarse
con las garras de ―la leona‖ inmigrante.5 Gutiérrez conecta intertextualmente mediante un matrimonio
ilegal, a Larrea, el inmigrante criminal, con Amalia, símbolo literario residual de las clases sociales más
pudientes de la Argentina decimonónica.
Nótese asimismo que en esta ocasión también se hace uso del entretejido intertextual, pero
que esta vez proviene de la literatura argentina, y se establece una relación dialéctica entre lo
conocido (Amalia, como símbolo de la alta burguesía porteña) y lo desconocido (la leona inmigrante).
Alegóricamente este ladrón inmigrante se ha apoderado de lo mejor, lo más puro, lo más hondamente
nacional del país, Amalia. Desde el púlpito de La Patria Argentina, Gutiérrez advierte a su público
lector que criminales de la talla de Larrea están ingresando al país. Las soluciones propuestas por el
autor porteño, para resolver el problema de los Larrea, empiezan con un control más riguroso de sus
pasaportes en las aduanas:
Un buen día del año 73, Larrea cayó a Montevideo, como caen a América todos los galeotos
que llegan a estas regiones; no trajo pasaporte, no trajo nada; pero nadie se preocupó de
averiguar quien era y a qué venía. (Un capitán de ladrones en Buenos Aires 7)
Aunque la cita anterior se refiere específicamente a la entrada de Larrea al Uruguay, el autor aclara
que de este modo llegan todos los presidiarios ―a estas regiones‖ (7) y, de igual modo, ―el galeoto‖ (7)
no tendrá dificultas en ingresar a la Argentina. Pero finalmente se garantiza la preservación de las
instituciones, cuando el sistema judicial y penitenciario argentino prevalezca, y asegure el castigo
ideológico, que no corporal, del criminal:
El más famoso criminal que haya pisado jamás una cárcel en Buenos Aires, es sin duda
alguna Antonio Larrea, muerto últimamente en la Penitenciaría, bajo el nombre honorable de
―el 291‖. (Un capitán de ladrones en Buenos Aires 5)
Recordemos que en los primeros folletines gauchescos de Gutiérrez el discurso pedagógico
nacional se inscribía sobre los cuerpos de Moreira y Cuello, pero en su serie policial, Gutiérrez, señala
la ―modernización‖ del sistema penal argentino, como lo comprueba la siguiente descripción:
48
Larrea ingresó a la Penitenciaría como encausado, por cuya razón no debía ser
afeitado y pelado, como es el régimen inevitable con los presos ya condenados y que deben
vestir el uniforme de la casa, cambiando entonces su nombre por un número adherido a la
espalda de la blusa, en los flancos de la especie de polisón que cubre su pelada, y sobre la
pierna del pantalón.
Si esta situación hubiera entonces llegado para Larrea, hubiera sido víctima, sin
duda alguna, de un fuerte ataque a la cabeza. (Un capitán de ladrones en Buenos Aires
114)
Los ejemplos anteriores ejemplifican el ritual de la encarcelación moderna, como lo son el ―afeitar y
pelar‖ al encausado, pero el número ―291‖ que territorializará
su cuerpo será uno de los vehículos para estampar el poder ideológico estatal en Larrea, y
transformarlo en un cuerpo dócil (cf. Foucault 102).6 Esto significa que en los folletines policiales de
Gutiérrez el estado ya funciona ―limpia‖ y ―eficientemente‖; la modernización no permitirá a estos
inmigrantes sin ley el lujo de morir trágicamente a lo Moreira y transformarse en héroes: ahora
terminarán muy burguesmente encarcelados.
La temática de la encarcelación y de la vida en la penitenciaría, ya sea inmigrante-emergente
o criollo-residual, alcanzará a lo largo del ciclo policial la relevancia que tuvieran las peleas a cuchillo,
las huidas en flete, las pulperías y los facones para su ciclo gauchesco.7 En otras palabras, la
penitenciaría se transformará en un componente básico del ―tour du monde‖ policial, y esto significa
que el autor porteño va minuciosamente edificando un universo textual de plurales urbanos, tan
reconocidos por su público lector como lo fuera el tour du monde gauchesco.8 Por lo tanto, el tour du
monde andersoniano se aproxima a la clásica definición de cronotopo según la entendía Mijaíl Bajtín,
en su elaboración de un universo textual, en un tiempo y en un espacio determinado. 9 Detengámonos
en el análisis de Rivera:
La posterior aparición de El jorobado y Los grandes ladrones (1880 y 1881, respectivamente)
retoma la vertiente iniciada con las aventuras de Antonio Larrea, y echa las bases entre
nosotros de esa fascinante inmersión en el mundo de los hampones y los desclasados, con
sus ilusiones frustradas y su escenografía sórdida de fondines, hoteluchos y montepíos , que
retomará años más tarde Fray Mocho (Memorias de un vigilante) y proseguirán Enrique
González Tuñón (Camas desde un peso), Héctor Blomberg (Las puertas de Babel), Roberto
Arlt (El juguete rabioso), Bernardo Cordón (Toribio Torres, alias Gardelito), etc. (Eduardo
Gutiérrez 41)
De este modo Gutiérrez comienza a moldear en la imaginación del lector un mundo textual ya
moderno (urbano y suburbano), el Buenos Aires de los ochentas, en rápido proceso de modernización.
No obstante, en este tour du monde del ciclo policial todavía prevalecerán los conventillos, las
despensas, las salas de billar y otros lugares representativos de los barrios pobres porteños. Es así que
Gutiérrez elabora este universo plural en el cual el nuevo imaginario criminal de los bajos fondos
urbanos puede desplazarse con toda naturalidad.
49
Recordemos que en el mismo año que Gutiérrez publicara su Capitán de ladrones en Buenos
Aires, 1879, también publicó su Juan Moreira, folletín en el cual Gutiérrez presenta el alegórico
enfrentamiento entre el pulpero italiano Sardetti y Juan Moreira, expresando la vena xenófoba en la
cual reposaba una vertiente ideológica del nacionalismo argentino. El pasaje de la xenofilia a la
xenofobia, recordemos, fue ideológicamente encabezado por ―ilustres‖ próceres nacionales como
Sarmiento, en sus obras de la vejez, y Alberdi.10 Este último drásticamente subvirtió el significado de
su famoso lema ―gobernar es poblar‖, de la siguiente manera:
Gobernar es poblar... pero con inmigrantes laboriosos, honestos, inteligentes y civilizados; es
decir, educados. Pero poblar es apestar, corromper, embrutecer, empobrecer el suelo más
rico y más saludable cuando se lo puebla con inmigrantes de la Europa más atrasada y
corrompida. (Peregrinación de luz del día o aventura de la verdad en el nuevo mundo 197)
A este sentimiento xenófobo se acoplaron las mayores figuras de la época, incluyendo a Gutiérrez,
quien lo proyecta pedagógicamente hacia los sectores populares urbanos, difundiéndolo a través de
los medios masivos.
Así como Alberdi cambia el significado de su famoso lema, exigiendo una inmigración que fuera, en
primer lugar, ―laboriosa y honesta‖, Gutiérrez critica la criminalidad de los Larrea.
En otras palabras, encontramos un denominador común en la crítica que ambos enfocan
hacia el nuevo inmigrante nacional. Alberdi propone, además, que el inmigrante sea ―inteligente y
civilizado, es decir, educado‖, y Gutiérrez, por su parte, reprocha en Antonio Larrea el mal uso de su
educación, o el uso de su educación para el mal. Vale recordar que las famosas notas de Larrea se
convertirán en el único ―cuerpo del delito firmado por su propio puño‖ (105). Es decir, en las únicas
pruebas contundentes conseguidas por la policía para encarcelar a Larrea. Alberdi agrega, más
contundentemente, que ―poblar es apestar, corromper, embrutecer [...] cuando se puebla con
inmigrantes de la Europa más atrasada y corrompida‖ (197), idea traducida por Gutiérrez en una
crítica específica a la inmigración española e italiana, como en: El Jorobado (1880), Los grandes
ladrones (1881), Carlo Lanza (1886), o Astucia de una negra (1886), entre otros. Todo esto hace que
los folletines de Gutiérrez se ubiquen en una línea populista que no excluye la xenofobia de la
aristocratizante generación del ochenta (cf. Onega 96-7), y que también explica el clasismo de los
folletines de Gutiérrez, atribuible en parte, a los drásticos cambios en el tipo de inmigración que la
Argentina recibió antes y después de 1850. Como dice Gladis Onega:
La explicación del proceso es bastante simple, los extranjeros que vivían en la Argentina hasta
1850 no eran inmigrantes en el sentido más corriente del término, sino profesionales,
comerciantes, militares, estancieros, gente con seguridad económica que no se veía como
competidora sino como colaboradora de la comunidad, y que constituía núcleos cuyos
reducido tamaño y relativamente alto nivel social, no provocaba alarma sino simpatía y
emulación. (La inmigración en la literatura argentina 21)
Esto significa en la práctica que Gutiérrez y sus aliados ideológicos del ochenta se enfrentan con la
nueva realidad de una inmigración masiva, aluvial y proveniente de los sectores menos privilegiados
de Europa.11 El discurso pedagógico de Gutiérrez se construye mediante la edificación de un tour du
50
monde policial, en el cual el lector viaja a modo de turista informándose sobre la vida de estos
bárbaros que ahora viven en los barrios bajos de Buenos Aires. A continuación nos detendremos
brevemente en algunos aspectos del folletín de Larrea que denotan el proceso transcultural
modernizante, o sea, el registro de la dialéctica tradición/modernidad.12
En primer lugar, Larrea es definido como un bárbaro y ladrón, que entre muchos otros actos
delictivos, ―le cortó la lengua a su delator Joselito Salat‖ (7), se dedicó a ―la punga de la calle‖ (9), y
llegó a ser ―un ladrón fino‖ (5). La ciudad en que habita ya no es la civitas virtuosa que en el Facundo
se oponía a la barbarie, pues ha perdido su antiguo poder civilizador. En el Buenos Aires de 1879,
Gutiérrez comienza a articular un discurso que acusa a ―la plebe ultramarina‖ de ―la Europa más
atrasada‖ –como diría Lugones durante el Centenario-, de traer violencia y malas costumbres al país
en vez de ―progreso‖. En tal sentido, Gutiérrez es un precursor en la construcción del otro nacional,
ahora encarnado en la figura del inmigrante citadino, ya no en el gaucho bárbaro de la tesis
sarmientina. Paradójicamente, entonces, Gutiérrez (se) moderniza en un juego de pinzas: por un lado,
en el Juan Moreira se apropia de lo tradicional, transformando a su Moreira en el imaginario popular
argentino por excelencia; por el otro, se mete de lleno en la problemática de la vida urbana moderna,
dando protagonismo, aunque de signo negativo, a los nuevos sectores inmigrantes y los espacios
proletarios del arrabal. Así Gutiérrez comienza el extenso proceso de reivindicación –territorializaciónen el imaginario nacional, de la figura del gaucho como estandarte nacional; mientras,
simultáneamente, le cierra la puerta al inmigrante citadino-―lunfardo‖. En la construcción del moderno
imaginario nacional, los Larrea son la otra cara de la moneda de los Moreira; mientras se reivindica
imaginariamente al gaucho, se comienza a ―otrificar‖ al inmigrante, construyéndolo imaginariamente
en el otro interior, posición que antes ocupara el gaucho.
Paralelamente, en el proceso transcultural modernizante Gutiérrez reformula los retazos de
modernidad que traían consigo los inmigrantes que constituyen atributos negativos cuando son
puestos en práctica por los imaginarios del crimen urbano. Larrea, quien lee ávidamente El conde de
Montecristo y se identifica con este hasta la locura, no ha sido injustamente condenado como lo fuera
Edmundo Dantes, de quien es una suerte de sucedáneo degenerado. Larrea trata de emular a
Edmundo Dantes en su criminalidad, en su condición de prisionero y persona fuera de la ley, y se
lamenta el no tener un abate Faría que le revele la existencia de un tesoro secreto, como aquel
heredado por Dantes. A diferencia de este, Larrea no limita su venganza a los culpables de su
condena, sino que el imaginario del crimen de Gutiérrez ―abre un canal‖ (101) en el cuerpo de todo
aquel que se interponga con sus planes. Larrea, en tal sentido, representa una desviación de la
educación, un mal uso de la modernidad, alegóricamente representado al momento de su
encarcelación:
A Larrea le ofrecieron una prueba y un cuerpo de delito que tenía que anonadarlo,
haciéndolo abandonar el camino de negarlo todo, que había adoptado; y este cuerpo del
delito, formidable, ineludible, eran las cartas dejadas por él, firmadas por su puño, en cada
casa donde había cometido sus latrocinios.
Al ver aquellas pruebas que lo anonadaban, Larrea no palideció, ni tembló, ni se
demudó, como se esperaba; las leyó con toda tranquilidad una por una, y sonriendo al
devolverlas dijo:
51
105)
-Es verdad, todas estas cartas son mías. (Un capitán de ladrones en Buenos Aires
Si Larrea representa un uso desviado de las destrezas modernas –la escritura y las fuentes
literarias- su castigo le llega por los residuos pre-modernos y tradicionales representados por la
primera esposa de Larrea, ―la castellana‖, quien por una mezcla de honestidad y venganza pasional, lo
delata ante la policía porteña por bigamia. Los residuos sentimentales pre-modernos de la castellana,
acoplados a la racionalidad calculadora moderna de Larrea, son las verdaderas causas de su
encarcelación. Quiere decir entonces que con respecto a sus prácticas transculturales Gutiérrez se
moderniza desplazándose hacia lo tradicional y, paralelamente, desconstruye los retazos modernos
traídos por los inmigrantes citadinos-―lunfardos‖. El inmigrante es ahora un bárbaro exótico en los
suburbios porteños, el otro interior cuya modernidad está cargada de barbarie.
___________________________
Notas
1
La fecha exacta de publicación no ha podido ser determinada, ver: Rivera 52. Y, nuestra
investigación en la Biblioteca Nacional de Buenos Aires tampoco pudo localizar el texto original de
1879.
2
Desde el punto de vista conceptual, el vocablo intertextualidad tiene una larga y fertile trayectoria en
la crítica literaria. Ha sido trabajado por numerosos críticos literarios, entre los cuales se destacan:
Julia Kristeva, Mijaíl Bajtín, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Gérard Genette y Michael Rifaterre—
entre muchos otros. Julia Kristeva es quien acuña el término, en ―Word, Dialogue and Novel‖ (1967),
incluido en Desire in Language (1980). A a su vez, Kristeva misma se vio influenciada por los estudios
lingüísticos de Ferdinand de Saussure y por el crítico literario Mijaíl Bajtín (Allen 8-11). Seguramente
uno de los axiomas que más agudamente puntualizan el concepto proviene de Roland Barthes: ―The
text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture [. . .] the writer can only
imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter
the ones with others, in such a way as never to rest on any of them.‖ (146-7) Al respecto véase: Allen
y Worton and Still.
3
Podemos aproximarnos a un entendimiento de lo pedagógico de la siguiente manera: ―Deprived of
the unmediated visibility of historicism –‗looking to the legitimacy of past generations as supplying
cultural autonomy‘ – the nation turns from being the symbol of modernity into becoming the symptom
of an ethnography of the ‗contemporary‘ within culture. Such a shift in perspective emerges from an
acknowledgement of the nation‘s interrupted address, articulated in the tension signifying the people
as an a priori presence, a pedagogical object; and the people constructed in the performance of
narrative, its enunciatory ‗present‘ marked in the repetition and pulsation of the national sign. The
pedagogical founds its narrative authority in a tradition of the people, described by Poulantzas as a
moment of becoming designated by itself encapsulated in a succession of historical moments that
represent an eternity produced by self-generation.‖ (Bhabha, Nation and Narration 298-9)
52
4
Escritor español y copioso productor de folletines, también escribió un gran número de novelas de
aventuras. En, Rivera 49; Ferreras 137-143.
5
Amalia, nombre de la protagonista de la novela Amalia (1852), de José Mármol.
6
De acuerdo a Deleuze y Guattari, el concepto de territorio podría definirse como, ―The territory is first
of all the critical distance between two beings of the same species, […] and a territorialization of
functions is the condition for their emergence as ―occupations‖ or ―trades‖. […] The territorial
assemblage is a milieu consolidation, a space-time consolidation, of coexistence and succession.‖(A
Thousand Plateaus 319-28) Y, este proceso de territorialización también se asocia con los dispositivos
utilizados por el Estado.
7
Raymond Williams se aproxima a una definición de lo emergente de la siguiente manera: ―By
‗emergent‘ I mean, first, that the new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and
kinds of relationship are continually being created […] the formation of a new social class, and within
this, in actual process, the (often uneven) emergence of elements of a new cultural formation. […]
What matters, finally, in understanding emergent culture, as distinct from both the dominant and the
residual‖ (Marxism and Literature 122). Para luego, contrastarlo con lo residual, que Willliams lo limita
como: ―By ‗residual‘ I mean something different from the ‗archaic‘ […] I would call the ‗archaic‘ that
which is wholly recognized as an element of the past […] The ‗residual‘ by definition, has been
effectively formed in the past, but is still active in the cultural process, not only and often not at all as
an element of the past, but as an effective element of the present‖ ( Marxism and Literature 123-26).
8
Benedict Anderson, define tour du monde de la siguiente manera: ―Nothing assures us the
sociological solidity more than the succession of plurals. For they conjure up a social space full of
comparable prisons, none itself of any unique importance, but all representative (in their
simultaneous, separate existence) of the oppressiveness of this colony‖ (Imagined Communities 30).
9
El concepto de cronotopo, de acuerdo a Mijaíl Bajtín, se delimita de la siguiente manera: ―Literally,
‗time-space‘ A unit for analysis for studying texts according to the ratio and nature of the temporal and
spatial categories represented. The distinctiveness of this concept as opposed to most other uses of
time and space in literary analysis lies in the fact that neither category is privileged; they are utterly
interdependent. The chronotope is an optic for reading texts as x-rays of the forces at work in the
culture systems from which they spring‖ (The Dialogical Imagination 425-6).
10
Este cambio radical en Sarmiento se puede detectar especialmente en Condición del extranjero en
América (1888) y; Conflicto y armonía de las razas (1883). Y en declaraciones periodísticas como su
―famoso‖ artículo para el Diario de 1887, en el cual declara abiertamente que: ―Lo más atrasado de
Europa, Los campesinos y gente ligera de las ciudades, es lo primero que emigra. Véalo en el
desembarcadero [...] El labriego español, irlandés o francés, viene a Santa Fe a saber lo que es
maquinaria agrícola, y a aprender a manejarla, porque en su país y en su comarca deja todavía el
rudo implemento primitivo [...] Pero lo que la emigración no nos trae es educación política de que
carecen las masas en general aunque en Inglaterra esté difundida y comience a generalizarse en
Francia, Alemania, etc‖ (9: 249-252).
11
En su estudio sobre el proceso de inmigración a la Argentina, Gladis Onega expresa lo siguiente: ―La
inmigración europea aumenta exponencialmente desde 1853, cuando la legislatura de la
Confederación autorizó la entrada de inmigrantes, y ese fue el comienzo del proceso de ingreso
masivo de extranjeros. [...] Una rápida ojeada a las cifras nos permite apreciar la rapidez y la
sorprendente eficacia con que se cumplió el supuesto básico de toda la política liberal: de 1.300.000
53
en 1859, a 1.737.076 en 1869, a 3.954.911 en 1895, y 7.885.237 en 1914. Combinemos estos datos
netos con otros comparativos: de 1859 a 1869 con un aumento de 400.000 personas (en cifras
redondas), a razón de 43.076 por año. Asimismo, de 1869 a 1895, con un aumento de más de dos
millones, a razón de 81.500 personas por año; y en el tercer período con un aumento de casi cuatro
millones, a razón de 207.000 personas por año; el porcentaje de extranjeros se ha elevado a al 42,7
por ciento sobre los argentinos nativos‖ (Onega 6).
12
Ángel Rama nos aproxima al concepto de transculturación, de la siguiente manera: ―[. . .] echar
mano a las aportaciones de la modernidad, revisar a la luz de ellas los contenidos culturales regionales
y con unas y otras fuentes componer un híbrido que sea capaz de seguir transmitiendo la herencia
recibida. Será una herencia renovada, pero que todavía pueda identificarse con su pasado‖
(Transculturación 29).
Obras Citadas
Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. Londres: Routledge, 2000.
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and
spread of Nationalism. 1983. Ed. revisada London: Verso,1991.
Bhabha, Homi K. The location of culture. London: Routledge, 1994
---. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge, 1990.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. The Dialogical Imagination. Four Essays. Trans. Carly
Emerson and Michael Holquist Austin: U of Texas P, 1981.
Barthes, Roland. Image-Music-Text. Londres: Fontana, 1977.
Benarós, León. ―Estudio preliminar‖ El Chacho. Buenos Aires: Hachette, 1960.
Castoriadis, Cornelius. The Imaginary Institution of Society. Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1987.
Deleuze, Giles and Félix Guattari. A thousand Plateus; Capitalism and
Schizophrenia. Trad. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP. 1987.
Ferreras, Juan I. La novela por entregas 1840-1900. Madrid: Taurus, 1972.
Fiske, John. Understanding Popular Culture. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish, the Birth of the Prison. 2nd ed.
54
Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
Giusti, Roberto F. ―Un folletinista argentino‖ en Literatura y vida. Buenos Aires:
Editorial Nosotros, 1939.
Gutiérrez, Eduardo. Un capitán de ladrones en Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: N.
Tommasi, 1886.
---. Juan Moreira. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sopena Argentina, 1939.
Kristeva, Julia. Desire in Language: a semiotic approach to literature and art. Ed.
Leon S. Roudiez. Nueva York: Columbia UP, 1980.
Lafforgue, Jorge y Jorge B. Rivera. Asesinos de papel. Ensayos sobre la
narrativa policial. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Colihue. 1995.
Martín-Barbero, Jesús. De los medios a las mediaciones. Madrid: Hispania
Books, 1991.
Mautner Wasseman, Renata. ―Mario Vargas Llosa, Euclides da Cuhna, and the
Strategy of Intertextuality.‖ Publications of the Modern Language
Association of America. 108.3 (1993): 460-73.
Onega, Gladis S. La inmigración en la literatura argentina (1880-1910). Buenos
Aires: Cuadernos del Instituto de Letras, 1965.
Rama, Ángel. Transculturación narrativa en América Latina. México: Siglo
veintiuno, 1982.
Rivera, Jorge B. Eduardo Gutiérrez. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nueva Visión,
1980.
---. El folletín y la novela popular. Buenos Aires: CEDAL, 1968.
Rodríguez McGill, Carlos. ―Lecturas intertextuales en los folletines gauchescos
de Eduardo Gutiérrez: Desde Juan Moreira hasta Los hermanos Barrientos.‖ Decimonónica
(Journal of Nineteenth Century Cultural Production) 5.2 (2008): 67-81.
Rojas, Ricardo. Los gauchescos. Historia de la literatura argentina. Vol. II.
Buenos Aires: Losada, 1948.
Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino. Civilización y barbarie: Vida de Juan Facundo
Quiroga. 1845. Ed. Raimundo Lazo. Ciudad de México: Editorial Porrúa,
55
1977.
---. Obras de D.F. Sarmiento. 39 vols. Buenos Aires: Imprenta Mariano Moreno,
1900.
---. Conflicto y armonía de las razas en América. 1883. Buenos Aires: La cultura
Argentina, 1915.
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press,
1977.
Worton, Michael y Judith Still. Intertextuality: Theories and Practices.
Manchester: Manchester UP, 1990.
56
Huízar, Angélica J.,Beyond the Page: Latin American Poetry from the Calligramme to the
Virtual. Academica Press: Palo Alto, CA, 2008.
María Mercedes Andrade
Universidad de los Andes
In his 1958 article ―Linguistics and Poetics,‖ Roman Jakobson argues that poetic texts
emphasize ―the message,‖ by which he means the signifier, as opposed to what occurs in texts that
privilege the ―referential‖ function,‖ which emphasize the signified. 24 In other words, poetry
emphasizes ―how‖ something is said, and not merely ―what‖ is being said: the poetic text constantly
calls attention to its own form: words are chosen for their sounds, not merely to convey a meaning,
and in this sense all sounds in a poem are equally important. Jakobson‘s reflections may serve as a
point of departure for understanding what Angélica Huízar proposes in the present book. Although
Jakobson claims that these characteristics are common to all poetry, as Huízar rightly notes, not all
poetry can actually be said to call attention to the signifier to a full extent. Only certain kinds of
poems, those that she calls ―performative‖ and which are the subject of her book, emphasize formal
elements while integrating them with the poem‘s meaning.
The notion of ―performativity‖ that is developed in the first chapter of the book goes beyond
Jakobson‘s analysis, as Huízar proposes that it can be subdivided into two types: ―sound‖ and ―visual‖
performativity. Borrowing from various fields, including performance studies and linguistics, Huízar
proposes that ―a poem is performative when its visual and sound properties, along with the reader‘s
active participation, make it enact beyond its semantic meaning‖ (6). ―Performativity,‖ she states,
―refers to the quality that makes the meaning stand out— the visual exposition on the page itself or
sonic quality of the poetry— whereby there is a dialogic relationship between the written text and the
oral performance‖ (7). According to the author, performative poems are those that seem to go
―beyond the page,‖ ―projecting meaning beyond the written word‖ (8). While such definitions may
initially seem enigmatic, her argument becomes clear in the following chapters of the book. Regardless
of whether they are actually performed in public or not, performative poems are those which draw
attention to the sound and visual characteristics of the text, while calling for the reader‘s active
participation and interpretation. A sound-performative poem draws attention to the possibility of a
sound performance, be it an oral or a musical one. The visual performativity of a poem, in turn, is
related to the way in which the text makes use of visual means (typography, spaces, the arrangement
of words on the page, visual images, etc.) in a way that is integral to the poem‘s meaning. One may
conclude that the performativity of poems is connected to the way in which they may link literary
expression and other artistic forms.
Beyond the Page discusses a wide array of Latin American poetic texts, spanning from the
Vanguardias to the present, all of which share the fact that they call attention to their visual and/or
sound qualities while actively engaging the reader. Huízar offers detailed analyses of various texts and
authors, as she provides not only a historical overview of the developments of poetic performativity,
24
Jakobson, Roman. Selected Writings, Vol. 6. New York: Mouton, 1985: 27
57
but a map that establishes connections among authors from various periods. An interesting aspect of
the study is the way in which the author places Latin American poetry in a dialogue with European
avant-garde culture. Huízar refers to the influence of movements such as Dadá, Surrealism, Cubism,
and Italian and Russian Futurism on Latin American authors, and she stresses the influence of poets
such as Mallarmé and Apollinaire. However, she also does justice to the originality of the Latin
American poetic tradition. In her analysis of Huidobro‘s work, for instance, Huízar explains how the
Chilean poet‘s work actually predates many of the visual techniques later used by the surrealists.
The book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 lays the basis for the rest of the text by
discussing the notion of performativity in relation to poetry. Chapter 2 analyzes early examples of
sound-performative poems, such as those of Julio Herrera y Reissig, César Vallejo, Alfredo Mario
Ferreriro (whose use of musical scores is particularly interesting), Vicente Huidobro, and Carlos
Germán Belli. Chapter 3 provides a detailed reading of visual performativity in Huidobro‘s work,
especially in the ―Painted Poems,‖ in which he collaborated with various visual artists. The work of
Concrete poet Haroldo de Campos is the subject of the fourth chapter. In it, Huízar discusses how the
Brazilian author‘s poetry puts into practice his theories on poetry by creating texts that are both
visually and sound performative, and which propose a rich interplay between image and sound. In the
fifth chapter Huízar analyzes Octavio Paz‘s experimentation with visual elements and Asian themes in
Blanco, and she discusses the collaboration between the poet Coral Bracho and the visual artist Irma
Palacios in Chapter 6. The final chapter is devoted to the work of Augusto de Campos, a founding
member of the Concrete Poetry movement who has adapted his earlier poetry, which already
emphasized sound and even made use of color, to the web. Huízar discusses how the use of
Macromedia Flash opens even more possibilities for experimentation, by incorporating sound and
moving images that enrich the poem‘s performativity.
Beyond the Page gives the reader a thorough overview of the main exponents of a specific
type of experimentation within the Latin American tradition. It orients readers who may be new to the
field, but also provides insightful reflections and analyses of particular poems for those who are
already familiar with the topic. As Marjorie Agosín notes in the Foreword to the book, the text‘s
originality lies in the way in which it highlights the importance of poetic innovation in a specific
tradition that finds its roots in the Vanguardias.
58
Arthur P. Whitaker Prize:
Jack Child, Miniature Messages: The Semiotics of Latin American Postage Stamps.
Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.
John Stolle-McAllister
University of Maryland-Baltimore County
I have to confess that when Miniature Messages first landed on my desk I was a little bit
skeptical. Not being a collector, I was afraid that I was about to embark on a long, although certainly
colorful, treatise of a hobby about which I had relatively little interest. My initial prejudice was quickly
laid aside, as Child makes a compelling case for finding the political, social and cultural importance in
the images that (at least used to) pass daily under our eyes. In this wonderfully interdisciplinary
work, he uses his extremely detailed account of the history of the postage stamp in Latin America, to
chart the contours of the region‘s political history, outlines a theory of semiotics that can be applied to
other kinds of everyday cultural production, and finally through the beautiful reproductions and CDROM that accompanies the book, provides those of us who teach Latin American studies with material
to engage our students on the topics of history, politics and aesthetics.
Child begins the book with a brief, but insightful discussion of semiotics as the base upon
which he will discuss what he calls the ―smallest icons of popular culture.‖ Postage stamps not only
point to themselves as stamps by their size, shape, placement, but they also (usually) explicitly
indicate their value and their country of origin. He proposes, however, that as productions of the
state, stamps are also packed with other symbolic value that are intended to send messages about
national identity, values, issues, history, aesthetics and sometimes even specific policies. Despite the
interests of government to promote particular messages, however, he warns that stamps should not
be seen as simple propaganda, however, but rather that they more subtly reflect and contribute to
national self images, because as with all cultural artifacts, once they have been produced and
circulated, their meanings are subjected to different interpretations and appropriations. By having his
readers focus on what would seem to be of the most ordinary items in a different way than usual,
Child invites us to consider some of the ways in which meaning, more generally, is produced,
circulated and consumed in national and increasingly transnational contexts.
His close reading of these stamps, therefore, is the true strength of this effort. Based on a
catalogue of more than 40,000 stamps, Child charts all manner of political, social and cultural
developments in the Americas as they have been portrayed through the images and words put on
stamps. He chronicles, in great detail, wars, revolutions, international partnerships, artistic
achievements, literacy campaigns and all matter of other events important to national governments
and represented through the images they produce on their postage stamps. He delineates differences
in kinds of regimes—with authoritarian governments more prone to glorify leaders and democratic
ones the country‘s institutions. He pays particular attention to Argentina, noting not only internal
political developments in the country, but also how its ongoing conflict with Great Britain over the
Falklands/Malvinas Islands and its exploration of Antarctica have been portrayed throughout the years,
more fully illustrating the potential of his semiotic reading of stamps to gain insight into political and
59
cultural development. Postage stamps become a concrete way not only to record important events in
a country, but they are also a means through which the meaning of those events are proposed,
circulated and transformed.
Finally, Child goes to great lengths to point out the pedagogical opportunities presented by
using postage stamps. He notes that since most stamps are public domain works, reproducing them
poses no legal or ethical issues. He helps the would be teacher by providing not only color plates in
the book, but also a CD-ROM with many of the images he discusses in the book and which can be
easily used for class presentations or student research projects. Just as his scholarly examination of
an unorthodox topic helps us to better understand both the theory and the politics of cultural
production, using stamps provides powerful, symbolically laden images to illustrate points in the Latin
American studies classroom, letting students see quite clearly a point being made about an historic
moment or a political process.
Miniature Messages represents a wonderful contribution to Latin American studies. It is a
painstakingly researched work that represents the best of interdisciplinarity, as it draws from cultural
studies, political science, history and other disciplinary traditions in its effort to explain the importance
of these cultural artifacts in reflecting and contributing to the historical moments of their creation and
circulation. As a text to be used in a classroom, Child writing is clear and his explanations of theory
and political phenomena avoid jargon and intertextual debates to allow readers to not only understand
his points about how even small cultural icons contribute to public debate, but indeed, to understand
the history and politics of Latin America itself. Finally, by making available the large library of images
that he has collected over the years, he helps researchers and students alike to have access to what
he is describing and to be able to use them in their own endeavors.
60
MACLAS PRIZE WINNERS - 2009
Arthur P. Whitaker Prize for the best book published by a MACLAS member in 2008-2009:
Jack Child. Miniature Messages: The Semiotics of Latin American Postage Stamps. Durham: Duke
University Press, 2008.
Harold Eugene Davis Prize for best article published by a MACLAS member in 2008-2009: No
prize was awarded this year.
Street Prize Essay for best article published by a MACLAS member in the 2008 volume of Latin
American Essays: David Sheinin (Trent University), ―Sport and the Nation in Proceso Argentina:
Dictatorship Ideologies, Media Representations, and the rise of Guillermo Vilas and Carlos
Reutemann.‖
John D. Martz III Prize for best graduate paper presented at the 2009 MACLAS XXX
Conference: No prize was awarded this year.
Juan Espadas Prize for best undergraduate paper presented at 2009 MACLAS XXX Conference:
―Macondo versus McOndo: realismo mágico y el peso de la memoria histórica en The Brief Wondrous
Life Oscar Wao‖
61
MACLAS OFFICERS – 2009-2010
President
Ivani Vassoler
VP/President Elect
Secretary
Secretary
Treasurer
Council
Council
Council
Past President
Kenneth Lehman
Gloria Clark
Barbara Tenenbaum
Brian Turner
Betsy Kiddy
Consuelo Hernández
Perla Sasson-Henry
Regina Root
ivani.vassolerfroelich@fredonia.edu
klehman@hsc.edu
gbc3@psu.edu
bten@loc.gov
bturner@rmc.edu
ekiddy@alb.edu
chernandez105@hotmail.com
sasson@usna.edu
raroot@wmc.edu
MACLAS Latin American Essays
Editors: Volume (1987) to Volume 23 (2010)
Robert J. Alexander, Rutgers University: Volumes I, II, III, IV.
Maria Mercededs Andrade, Universidad de los Andes, Vol. XVI-XXIII.
Alvin Cohen, Lehigh University (Managing Editor): Vols. V, VI, VII.
Edith Couturier, NEH Administrator: Volumes I, II, III.
Juan Espadas, Ursinas College: Vols.I-X.
Ken Lehman, Hampden-Sydney College, Vol. XXII.
Joan Marx, Muhlenberg College: Vol. XVII-XXIII.
Judy B. McInnis, University of Delaware: Vols.XI-XV.
Vincent Poloso, Howard University: Vols. IV, V, VI.
Vera B. Reber, Shippensburg University: Vols. VII-XXI.
Harold D. Sims, University of Pittsburgh: Vols. VIII-, XIV, XV.
John Stolle-McAllister, University of Maryland-Baltimore County: Vol. XXIII
Brian Turner, Randolph-Macon College: Vol. XXI-XXIII
Christina Turner, Virginia Commonwealth U: Vols. XIII- XIX.
Visit the MACLAS web page:
www.maclas.org
62
MACLAS PRESIDENTS 1979/1980 to 2009/2010
1979–1980
1980-1981
1981-1982
1982-1983
1983-1984
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2004-2005
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2006-2007
Charles Ameringer (acting)
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Ivo Domínguez
G. Pope Atkins
John D. Martz
Michael Burke
Judith Ewell
Jack Child
Robert Alexander
Vera Blinn Reber
Vincent Peloso
Harold Sims
Winthrop R. Wright
Mark Wasserman
Harold Greer
Elizabeth Espadas
Alvin Cohen
Arvilla Payne-Jackson
Dan Masterson
Clarence Zuvekas, Jr.
James A. Baer
Hanna Stewart-Gambino
Judy B. McInnis
David Sheinin
John Incledon
Barbara Tenenbaum
Brian Turner
Anna Adams
2007-2008
John Stolle-McAllister
2008-2009
Regina Root
2009-2010
Kenneth
Lehman
Ivani Vassolier
Penn State University
Penn state University
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Library of Congress
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University of Maryland,
Baltimore County
The College of William and
Mary
SUNY Fredonia
Hampden-Sydney College
2010-2011
63
MACLAS SECRETARY-TREASURERS: 1979-2010
1980-1983
1985-1987
1988-1994
1994
1995-2001
2002-2006
2000-2006
Michael Burke
Winthorp R Wright
Alvin Cohen
Danusia Mesón S.
Frank Gunter
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2007
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2007
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(sec.)
2008
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2009
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2009
Barbara Tenenbaum
(sec.)
2010
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Villanova University
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University
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Randolph-Macon
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Randolph-Macon
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Library of Congress
64
Randolph-Macon
College